University of Utah engineers led by professor Carlos Mastrangelo aims to discard the need of people for reading glasses. The team of engineers have developed a pair of smart glasses that automatically lets a person with poor vision focus on what they are seeing, it doesn’t matter if it’s close up or far away.
Source: Phys
Professor Mastrangelo told Phys.org that “Most people who get reading glasses have to put them on and take them off all the time. “You don’t have to do that anymore. You put these on, and it’s always clear.” Their project has been published in the journal Optics Express.
These smart glasses have adaptive lenses that are made of glycerin, which is a thick colorless liquid, and is enclosed in a flexible rubber-like material membrane on both sides. The membrane at the back is connected to three mechanical actuators that pushes the membrane back and forth just like a transparent piston. This mechanism alters the curvature of the liquid lens and will in turn adjust the focal length between the lens and the eye. The adjustment process from one object to another only takes 14 milliseconds and will compensate for the loss of focus that is usually related with aging eyes.
Source: Futurism
According to Mastrangelo, “The focal length of the glasses depends on the shape of the lens, so to change the optical power, we actually have to change the membrane shape.” The only thing the user needs to do is enter their eyeglass prescription into an app one time, and the glasses will calibrate the lenses automatically via Bluetooth.
As for the prototype, the lenses are housed in custom-made eyeglass frames that was invented by the team. The actuators are controlled by battery-powered electronics. They are currently working to improve the design and create a sleeker, lighter design which they hope to be made available in the near future.
There are millions of people in the world who are dealing with vision problems, and this could just be the answer.
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