The idea of a “contact lens display” concept could become the ultimate way of implementing Augmented Reality (AR) someday, but it’s a highly challenging endeavor. MojoVision is one of the companies working to make it happen, and its CEO has demonstrated a Mojo Lens prototype placed on his eye.
The Mojo Lens is a contact lens with all the electronics to power a 0.5mm display with extremely tiny 1.8 microns pixels. The small size of the display currently limits its effective image resolution, but that’s something that could be improved later.
The display’s content is visible even in broad daylight and even when you close your eyes.
The lens communicates with a computer via a 5GHz radio, and that’s how data flows back and forth, including the imaging data. Mojo Vision says that the communication is low-latency, but it’s unclear how responsive it is.
Eye movements are tracked using an accelerometer to stabilize the image in the user’s field of view. This motion data lets the computer compensate for eye motion when updating the rendered image.
Mojo Vision uses the person’s gaze as a controller, and commands can be given by looking at something and perhaps staying on target for a short time. Many AR applications already have similar interfaces with XR (eXtended Reality) headsets.
It is a milestone to build such a contact lens, completely wireless. The company says Mojo Lens is powered by “medical-grade micro-batteries.”
While it’s a science-fiction level of technical achievement, one must wonder what the image quality, how wide the field of view is, and what the cases are. On a high level, it would be great to have a high-resolution display as it would be so helpful in all kinds of XR applications.
On the other hand, many people are reluctant to have something on their eyes, especially when it involves electronics and a battery. I suspect that even if it were to work perfectly today, it would take many years and a killer application before it becomes mainstream.
Filed in . Read more about Augmented Reality (AR), Social Hit and Virtual Reality (VR).
