Smart Contact Lenses Could Kick AR Into The Mainstream

Augmented reality (AR) had a rocky start to life, perhaps surprisingly for a technology that Google launched into the public consciousness with skydivers. Nearly a decade ago, Google Glass launched with people jumping out of airplanes at the company's I/O conference. Despite a stellar introduction, Google Glass has stalled, hampered by privacy concerns and failing to live up to expectations. Rather than offering a fantastic smorgasbord of awesomeness, the glass is like trying to read Twitter from the TV across the room.

Other AR headsets followed suit, from Microsoft's HoloLens to Magic Leap. Recently, Meta teamed up with Ray-Ban to release a better designed iteration of the smart glasses. However, neither was particularly successful, although both Glass and HoloLens offered quiet advantages in medical and corporate circles.

Several companies are now hoping to enter the augmented reality market. Mojo Vision announced that Mojo lenses are ready for launch earlier this year and are just awaiting regulatory approval, while InWith unveiled its version at CES 2022.

The concept is the same: filling contact lenses with tiny circuits so they can communicate with smartphones to display information. Mojo lenses are hard contact lenses and Inwith are soft lenses that most people often use for vision correction. With many examples of AR devices failing to catch on, these companies are betting that smart contact lenses are the technology that's making augmented reality mainstream.

How close are we to a working smart lens?

Michael Hayes, co-founder and CEO of Inwith, has worked for nearly a decade on the development of flexible electronics in soft contact lenses, developing concepts for lens manufacturers. This technology integrates miniature processors, communication chips, antennas, sensors, chargers, energy storage and more into a tiny lens to display images and text to the user's eyes.

We hope to have a product next year, Hayes said. "What we're working on now is regulatory approval of the first version of the lens. Well, that's a priority, and then we'll go to market."

Despite the buzz around smart lenses, Oscar Mendez, professor of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) at the University of Surrey, warns that people need to understand the technology's limitations. It should be noted that, at least initially, the field of view will be very small. "Consumers need to know that it's not going to be an immersive experience even if your device is watching something," he said. "It would be something more targeted."

What are the limitations of Smart Goals?

Hayes says the first versions of smart-lens AR will have more of a heads-up display (HUD) than full immersion. "It's not going to be like fully owning the Oculus Rift," he said. "You're not going to be immersed in a 3D game, you're going to have information telling you about things in your environment that are currently invisible to you, linked to smartphone alerts and alerts."

Of course, hardware is only part of the problem. Mendez also worked on camera locations. If the AR camera "knows" where it is, the virtual object can be docked or "parked" in a certain location and stay there - if you leave a virtual note as a reminder when you get home, it should be there when you come back , for example. "It's no longer just a look of the head somewhere, but it's based in the real world," he said. "And I think it's a technology that we need to get to before we get AR before people expect or expect it."

Such a system exists and is used in larger headsets like the HoloLens, but getting it into such a small package is a challenge, Mendez said, especially when it comes to understanding the trade-off between performance and what people will get. "It would be interesting to find a middle ground between what a person would tolerate ... something that moves a little bit," he said. "It's more human-computer interaction than computer vision."

Meanwhile, futurist William Higham argues that the problem with Google Glass is not technology, but exclusivity. "The big problem with Google Glass is the video camera," he said. "It created a media storm. Get rid of the video camera, and I think Google Glass can do that."

Hayes confirmed that the first iteration of the InWith smart lens will be cameraless. "Initially we did not plan to introduce such a lens," he said. - He will have a version where he explores the environment and helps the blind to pay attention to things and see better, he explained. We don't plan to do any part of our goal at first."

Can augmented reality really enter the mainstream?

If and when such a lens is approved by regulators, one question remains: do people want AR? Himan thinks so. "Look at what happened with Pokemon Go," he said, referring to the augmented reality game that became popular in 2016. "That's a great example of how the adoption of RA has been huge. It's very usual.

"I think an AR vision product is really the way to go because it's not a solution to one problem – it actually has the potential to solve a lot of problems," Higham added. "Using maps to get directions on your phone can be a pain when you're walking or driving."

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Outside of gaming, augmented reality has a number of potential applications, and Hayes suggests the technology could be used for navigation, messaging and directions. Mojo Lens partners with fitness and exercise companies, and it's easy to see how runners, cyclists and others can assess activity and health data in real-time without taking out their phones or looking at their smartwatches. "The only two places in the human body where you can give useful information are around the hands and around the eyes, and I think the eyes are much better because they're there," Higham added.

Mendez, however, cautions that while augmented reality may seem like the best solution, people often prefer simpler solutions. It describes a research effort to create a set of instructions for operating a coffee machine with smart cups, in which one of the main challenges was ensuring that virtual arrows pointed to the correct buttons without the user simply pointing their head. There have been many attempts to fix this tracking problem, but in the end, users prefer to watch YouTube videos and figure out for themselves which button it is. "Sometimes a very simple solution is more satisfying to the user," says Mendez.

Hayes points out that augmented reality is not the only use case. InWith lenses can also be used to correct vision, especially for people who are nearsighted or farsighted, and may one day allow our vision to be magnified like a camera. "This vision correction is the future, as are AR applications," he added. "The entire ophthalmology industry will be destroyed."

Will smart lenses end smartphones?

Mojo's marketing line is that smart contact lenses are unlocking the future of invisible computing, allowing users to dimly see information instead of holding a phone to their face or sitting behind a laptop. While this may be a day for consumer computing, it's hard to imagine anyone punching holes in their monitors and keyboards to keep them active, whether coding or giving PowerPoint presentations, with limited vision in any reasonable environment. At least in the short term, smartphones are unlikely to be completely replaced by smart lenses.

"It's not that simple that we're going to use these devices the way we use our cell phones," Mendez said. "It won't necessarily replace your phone...it's more of an extension of your phone than a replacement."

However, smart contact lenses could overcome the friction of Google Glass and other headsets and open up the possibility of small steps towards augmented reality, if not the entire metauniverse. In fact, Higham says, smart lenses could bring concepts like the Metaverse into the real world. "I've always been suspicious of this avatar and this virtual world, so I think it's cool that you can do that while living your real life," he explains. "With the Metaverse, people have to look at science fiction and see that this is a tool that's really going to make life easier, not create other worlds."

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