On our last team building event we were asked to describe the world 20 years from now. It was uncanny how many of my colleagues wrote the phrase “smart contact lenses” in their description of the future.
Now it seems that this fringe technology might be closer to reality than previously thought. The idea of a smart wearable device is not new, not in the slightest. We’ve been reading about smart tattoos, smart body stickers, smart clothes, and we even had our first spin at the smart glasses concept with Google Glass.
One interesting concept has the potential to bring our communication capabilities to a whole new level. Smart contact lenses have been inside laboratories around the world for quite some time but now it seems that the technology is reaching a tipping point, and consumer products are not too far away.
MojoLens
Earlier this year, during CES 2022, MojoVision announced a partnership with Adidas to bring the first smart contact lenses to the masses. MojoVision’s prototype is called Mojo Lens and uses a tiny microLED display the size of a grain of sand.
This hard lens can display various types of information overlaying maps, run courses, and useful data about different objects onto our world. It sounds and looks like something taken out of a sci-fi movie but apparently, MojoVision is now looking for volunteers to test its smart contact lenses.
Oh, and by the way, these lenses also correct your vision, and they are powered by miniscule solid state batteries - the new battery tech that is slowly coming to electric vehicles and also promises a revolution for all types of electronic devices such as smartphones, smartwatches, tablets, laptops, and more.
InWith Flexible Contacts
At CES 2022 one company went even further in its smart contacts dreams. InWith Corp. announced the first soft smart contact lenses, and also its vision of the coming metaverse, and the role of wearable technology in it.
“Our patented platform enables a multiverse of applications within a single contact lens, from XR to tunable focus, to Biosensors, these are just a few examples,” boldly reads one of the PR materials on InWith’s official website.
InWith promises a lot of things and it sounds a bit snake oily but appearing at CES and sharing all those things is certainly a step in the right direction. For example, InWith’s flexible contacts will be able to use your blinking to power itself.
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These flexible smart contact lenses will also feature an autofocus mechanism, removing the need for different types of glasses or conventional contacts for people with vision problems. InWith also sees its creation first implemented in an augmented reality scenario.
"You'll be able to see things such as, What is the speed limit on this road? What direction am I heading? Where is the next exit and how many miles away?" said the CEO of the company Micheal Hayes in an interview with CNET.
According to the report, the major players on the smart contact lens market will be Google, Samsung, and Sony. Google has been working on smart contacts for years. The company announced the Google Contact Lens back in 2014 as a project to help people with diabetes keep track of their blood glucose levels.
Even though the project was discontinued due to lack of correlation between the glucose on people’s retina and blood glucose, the framework and the foundation are already there.
Samsung also has a bunch of patents on the subject, including one for smart contact lenses with built-in cameras. And while the gap between a patent and a real-life product could be infinitely big, the Korean company won’t miss the opportunity to be one step ahead of its competitors.
When will smart contact lenses finally arrive?
That’s a bit difficult to judge but it won’t be 20 years (with all due respect to my colleagues and their futurology predictions). Market analysts say that we’re already in a race between big tech behemoths to offer consumer-ready smart contact lenses to the world.
The only thing halting the progress is the technology itself - making batteries smaller enough, and safer enough to put them close to your eyes, developing low-consumption displays and means of communication, small enough chips to fit in a contact lens, etc.
But we’re starting to see the first prototypes already, and when the first real product hits the shelves, we might see an exponential growth in both models and availability of those smart devices.
What do you think about the concept? Would you put something like this in your eye? I can’t wear lenses, so this technology is out of reach to me, so I’ll have to stick with smart glasses.
Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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