Since 2015, a California-based company called Mojo Vision has been developing smart contact lenses. Like smart glasses, the idea is to put helpful AR graphics in front of your eyes to help accomplish daily tasks. Now, a functioning prototype brings us closer to seeing a final product.
In a blog post this week, Drew Perkins, the CEO of Mojo Vision, said he was the first to have an "on-eye demonstration of a feature-complete augmented reality smart contact lens." In an interview with CNET, he said he's been wearing only one contact at a time for hour-long durations. Eventually, Mojo Vision would like users to be able to wear two Mojo Lens simultaneously and create 3D visual overlays, the publication said.
According to his blog, the CEO could see a compass through the contact and an on-screen teleprompter with a quote written on it. He also recalled viewing a green, monochromatic image of Albert Einstein to CNET.
[...] At the heart of the lens is an Arm M0 processor and a Micro LED display with 14,000 pixels per inch. It's just 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) in diameter with a 1.8-micron pixel pitch. Perkins claimed it's the "smallest and densest display ever created for dynamic content."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bmimatt on Wednesday July 06 2022, @07:14PM (4 children)
To me this sounds like 'moar ads'. This doesn't eliminate the good use cases, but ads will be shown. Likely aggressively if one of the big boys acquires it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 06 2022, @07:23PM
It's a Cortex-M0 computing device. You control it or you don't.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday July 07 2022, @06:12PM (2 children)
What exactly were those?
I can't think of anything important enough to make me want to stick something in my eye. Or is Apple going to start selling them, so we have to buy them or become a social outcast?
(Score: 2) by bmimatt on Thursday July 07 2022, @06:17PM
There may be use cases that are actually useful, such as providing real-time data for additional context (probably "AI"- assisted), in medical, industrial and likely many other fields.
(Score: 2) by bmimatt on Thursday July 07 2022, @06:36PM
I use MBPs for work, an iPhone as my primary phone. I do not participate in the antisocial media, yet I do not feel like a social outcast, I do have friends, good friends and great friends. Most of them do use various antisocial media to some extent, but that does not preclude them from having real, friendly relationships with people like me, who refuse to waste time on the so-called social media. I also do not feel Apple can compel me to use their shiny new gear, unless I find it useful to a meaningful extent and there are no significantly better options with less invasive privacy policies available.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 06 2022, @08:13PM (4 children)
Remember Google Glass?
Remember crazy people violently physically assaulting anyone they saw wearing google glass?
Oh, but these don't have cameras??
But, oh . . .
Uh, yeah, right.
So it is internet connected in some sense since cents are earned by advertising.
Advertising is augmented reality too!
Corporations are people too!
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday July 06 2022, @09:32PM (2 children)
This stood out to me.
To be useable, the system would have to depend on tracking eye movement. You wouldn't want a compass directly in the center of your field of vision most of the time, but you _would_ want to look 'directly' at it when needed rather than have it dance maddeningly away whenever you try to look at it. I assume that eye tracking would be used to keep the position of display objects fixed relative to the position of the head, not the eye (so you could actually look at and read stuff e.g. look up toward your eyebrows to see the compass). That being the case, why not just say that eye movement is integral to the function of the system?
The only reasonable inference therefore is that 'research' == advertisements. This should be fun - imagine having an ad pop up in front of your vision when driving or operating heavy machinery! Even better, hackers set all of the pixels to black!
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday July 06 2022, @11:59PM (1 child)
By the time you are forced to wear this, you will have a flying driverless car.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday July 07 2022, @02:50PM
But will we have power laces and hoverboards?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday July 06 2022, @11:53PM
Glassholes got assaulted because some people are dumb animals who had a visceral reaction to obvious eyeborg recording equipment. IIRC some of the assaults happened in bars, so you can add alcohol into the equation.
This thing seems pretty inconspicuous, because it has to be to fit on top of your eye balls. I wouldn't rule out the inclusion of flat metalens camera/sensors in the future, which would make it much more useful. You could film and not get attacked unless someone gazes deep and sees the green of your PCBs. The footage could be transmitted to a router and off to the cloud, or to a smartphone brick in your pocket.
Eye tracking is done in research settings. For it to be useful in the real world for something like advertising, it probably has to be able to track your position and the orientation of your head. It also needs more than an hour of battery life. Maybe there's something more basic that can be done with eye tracking and no sophisticated position tracking, like providing evidence that you are developing Alzheimer's [nature.com].
Glassholism will eventually be normalized. Probably by Apple. [wccftech.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Wednesday July 06 2022, @11:35PM
I got my eyeballs lasered in 2000. I've still got 20/20 vision in my right eye, and 20/25 in my left (although the dude fucked up, I'm left eye dominant and my left eye was supposed to be the 20/20 one).
After decades of coke bottle glasses, why would I want to give part of this magical procedure, which if memory serves I paid $2500 per eyeball for, to yield part of my eyeball to ads?
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Uncle_Al on Thursday July 07 2022, @12:02AM
FDA approval