Smart Contact Lenses
Smart contact lenses are science fiction for the majority of people but they are actually a real thing that already exists even though still on development.
Mojo Vision is a company that develops contact lenses empowered by augmented reality using microelectronics and a very tiny display, currently the world’s densest one, connected to your smartphone. When you wear this lenses you can see at the same time the real world and the information provided by the technology. The information or digital images are not always disturbing your real world’s vision, they appear only when needed. These smart contact lenses are supposed to be safe, both on the physical sense and on the ethical sense: the information registered stays private because they planned to stock the data in their Invisible Computing platform.
Only people staring at your eyes can notice something, otherwise it is very discreet since you do not move neither your head neither you hold a device with your hands. This point is actually the biggest difference with smart glasses that are definitely not discreet and give a nerd look.
This technology could be really useful in situation in which you need to speak to a public, such as a presentation or TV or even cinema, any kind of situation in which you need to keep your head up… It could be also very useful in situation in which you cannot really use your hand, such as while driving or even simply walking in the street.
In addition to this easily imaginable features, they already started to aim higher: smart contact lenses will even give you the superpower to see in the dark! Samsung works on developing smart contact lenses that will allow you to record what you see, and for activating the video you will just need to purposely blink!
Some other smart contact lenses projects from other companies that didn’t achieved their objectives yet imagined contact lenses for more specific medical problems. Novartis and Google tried to develop smart contact lenses that were supposed to measure glucose levels from your tears for diabetic people, and would send the data directly to the smartphone. This project was abandoned mainly because tears ended up by not being such reliable for measuring glucose levels.
Also in the medical sphere, a Swiss company makes a lens that tests the user’s eye pressure all day long and according to the measurement results it can monitor symptoms of glaucoma and this kind of lenses will potentially be very useful for all people suffering from eye disorders (such as glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, dry eye, etc.).
We are standing at the beginning of the wearable technology era, with smartwatches and others already commercialized. Soon we can expect the beginning of the smart contact lenses commercialization. Smart eyes are predicted to reach 7.2 billion USD in revenue by 2023 according to Market Watch project.
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