- The French startup Ixi is working on glasses with automatic approach lenses
- The built -in sensors track the movements of the eye
- Liquid crystal lenses adjust the approach to match what you are seeing
Etencing to see a sign, tilting his head to look at someone, looking through the nose to read a menu: For millions of people with a vision of the future, glasses are a constant commitment. But a new type of smart glasses aims to clarify things, with the help of automatic approach lenses.
Finlish Startup Ixi is a company that develops Marcos with adaptive optics. Your glasses wear small sensors to track what you are seeing, then liquid crystal lenses to adjust your view to adapt. Then you can go from reviewing your phone to watch a game in a blink.
Besides, no one should see any difference. Ixi’s goal is to make them look and feel like their normal glasses, with the electronics small enough to fit in the frames. So, although it is possible that they do not allow you to abandon your specifications completely, automatic approach glasses do not require a bulky headset.
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When it comes to future vision, the standard solution is currently Bifocals. These lenses are divided into two zones: one for distant objects, the other for almost details. When a user wants to read something close, he has to look through the latter. It is a solution with a learning curve, and one that can involve tinatural headlines and limited viewing angles.
Progressive lenses offer some refinement, softening the transition between close and far, but they still have focal sweet points. Fundamentally, you cannot look anywhere in the framework in what you want. That is the problem that Ixi plans to solve.
In the heart of its design there is a powerful pairing: ocular monitoring sensors and a fast change lens system. The sensors monitor the eye movements, firing hardeic pulses of light to measure the distance between you and what you are seeing. Then, these data are returned to liquid crystal lenses, which can quickly change your curvature to give a perfect approach.
According to Ixi, the lenses are adjusted in just 0.2 seconds. The human eye focuses on about 0.4 seconds, which should mean that there is no discernible delay between looking and seeing. That is particularly true for older users: our eyes become slower when we concentrate as we age, because the natural lenses of the eye become less flexible. This is called Presbyopia and is the same condition that causes the vision of the future.
This type of optical technology has been spoken before, but mainly in a research environment. Ixi is one of the first laboratories that tries to miniaturize the concept in a product for daily use. It helps that the startup has obtained about $ 36 million (around 27 million / UA $ 56 million) in funds to accelerate development.
That said, Ixi is not the only company that works in automatic approach glasses. Laclarée and Elcy are rival companies that develop similar solutions. None of the three has brought a commercial solution to the market, which perhaps is indicative of the obstacles that remain before the framed landslides on public faces.
The prescribed degree optics are subject to a strict medical regulation, which means that automatic approach lenses must approve. There is also a matter of durability every time it comes to mobile parts. Other factors include how to incorporate batteries to feed the glasses, while keeping light and comfortable frames.
Even so, the promise is convincing: a single pair of adaptive glasses that can replace reading specifications, distance and bifocal lenses. It is a step towards truly intelligent glasses. If Ixi can achieve it, the days of looking on the tires can be behind us.
