Eyewear innovations are coming into focus
While other tech companies like Meta and Google are doubling down on efforts to spin out smart glasses with futuristic specs, one eyewear startup is working on improving the world's oldest wearable's most basic function: vision correction.
Finland-based IXI is developing autofocus glasses that adjust to a user's vision on the fly, and it's raised $40m in funding to bring it to market. If it succeeds, it would be the eyewear industry's first major innovation on vision correction in ~60 years.
Similar to bifocals and varifocals, IXI's glasses would still have separate regions for different magnification, but it would provide a much more natural viewing experience with less distortion and a larger near-vision area, per CNN.
How it works
- Embedded sensors track a wearer's eyes while infrared light is used to measure the reflection and predict what they're looking at.
- That data is converted to electrical signals that inform liquid crystals within the lenses to adapt to the wearer's needs.
What that could mean for people with trouble seeing far and near: no need to own multiple pairs of glasses or peer through the bottom half of your lenses to read.
Other companies are also working on autofocus lenses
Japanese company Elcyo's tech also uses liquid crystal lenses, while ViXion (also Japanese) already offers autofocus glasses, though they have a narrower field of vision and look a bit… cyborg-y.
Which is what makes IXI's product more consumer friendly: They're lightweight and look like normal glasses — something other smart glass makers have struggled with — despite all the hardware embedded within them.
The drawbacks?
One is cost, which CEO Niko Eiden told CNN would put the glasses "in the really high end of existing eyewear," adding only that they'd be more expensive than the current options, which can retail for up to $1k+.
They'd also need to be charged overnight, which means one more device to manage, with complicated repairs and some potentially dangerous implications. We can imagine a few scenarios that could be bad for, like when driving.
They'll require further testing — for conditions like temperature change, moisture, lighting, etc. — before they're safe to use on the road, though it does have a failsafe mode that would restore the glasses to their base prescription in the event of a malfunction.
So, IXI has a few big kinks to work out before the high-tech spectacles, which are due to launch within the next year, are ready for everyday use.
In any case, I guess you could say the future is looking clear AF.
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