aggressive media, but that are also lightweight and fashionable. Steve Willey found an inherent conflict in the ability of virtual reality products to meet these goals. The conventional approach uses tiny flat-panel displays in the glasses aligned with optical components that focus the image, so that the wearer perceives they are viewing a normal television screen or small monitor. Willey proposed that removing the optical components from the glasses themselves might offer the answer.
‘As you move the optics closer to the eye, a smaller component will do the job of a larger one,’ noted Willey. His company, Seattle-based Innovega, has developed a technology to ‘float’ a one millimetre optic on the eye as part of a soft contact lens. This provides a focal plane at 15mm from the eye, which can be projected on an organic LED or liquid crystal micro-display panel integrated into any pair of glasses. Because there are no bulky optics on the frames, the display screen can be brought into the field of view with very little motion, similar to the way a person wearing a hat would move their head slightly to improve their vision. Users can see media by merely dropping their chin half an inch.
Innovega’s ‘iOptik’ design comprises a passive contact lens with at least two components and no electronics inside the lens. The contact lens is 99 per cent the user’s normal prescription, and one per cent in the centre moulds the micro-lens for viewing media. Put on the glasses, and the micro-lens image projects onto the inside of the glasses and reflects back into the eyes, offering a 50° field of view. At the same time, light from the real world goes through the glasses to the user’s eyes, without interference from the tiny micro-components. The display can be controlled by touchpad, voice recognition, and – uniquely suited to the contact lens – eye tracking. ‘Now you have a situation where both your world and your media are in focus,’ said Willey. ‘You retain your regular [prescription] vision, but have a ‘magic’ decoder for anything by wearing the glasses.’ The basic technology is merely a screen. But adding a multitude of different sensors in the frame makes it a companion product for a smartphone, a tiny camera or accelerometer for sports, or an on-chip medical sensor component. ‘You can have a variety of glasses – ski goggles, sports glasses – depending on the application,’ added Wiley. ‘Our lens is passive, but you could place other sensors inside the lens. As much as
www.electrooptics.com | @electrooptics
our business enables big field-of-view glasses as a display or interface, it will extend into sensor-related applications.’
Innovega hopes to complete the FDA approval
process and begin selling their product in late 2016.
Functional and flexible Wearable tech goes further than what meets the eye, however. In August, President Obama announced a $171 million Manufacturing Innovation Institute to ‘secure US leadership in next-generation bendable and wearable electronic devices’. It will consist of a consortium of 162 companies, non-profit organisations, labs, and universities headquartered in San Jose, CA at the heart of Silicon Valley. Flexible electronics manufacturing has the ‘power to create sensors that can be lighter in weight, or conform to the curves of a human body, and stretch across the shape of an object or structure,’ according to a statement made by the White House. On both sides of the Atlantic, wearable technologies are stretching to incorporate functional and fashionable photonics into thin- film materials that interface with tiny sensors and LEDs for media, sports, and healthcare applications. In September, Electro Optics reported on a
Now you have a situation where both your world and your media are in focus
research collaboration between the Holst Centre, nanoelectronics research centre imec, and the Centre for Microsystems Technology (CMST) of Ghent University, Belgium; this resulted in the development of a stretchable and conformable thin-film transistor LED display that can be incorporated into clothing.
Now, engineers who helped to develop the technology are working to improve reliability, resolution, and as well as applications that will provide the user with data.
‘Our technology is made in a way that we can integrate whatever sensor we want on the platform,’ said Frederick Bossuyt, team leader of CMST’s Stretchable Interconnects Department. Flexible islands of electronics are linked with stretchable metallic interconnects, and the entire system is then encapsulated into an elastic polymer. In one version – for large area, low cost applications – printed circuit board techniques are used to make the stretchable devices. In another version, miniaturised stretchable devices are constructed from layers of micron-thick polymer and metals with glued components. These stretchable devices are ideal to integrate into fabrics, combined with
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