With Google Glass set to go on sale this year, a lesser-known player has been working on another type of augmented reality eyewear in the form of contact lenses.
At CES this week, Washington-based company Innovega will be unveiling its prototypes of iOptik, an augmented reality system which projects a heads-up display onto contact lenses.
However, the iOptik system still requires a pair of glasses to function. Acting as a micro-display, the glasses project a picture onto the contact lens, which works as a filter to separate the real-world from the digital environment and then interlaces them into the one image.
Embedded in the contact lenses are micro-components that let the user focus on near-eye images. Light projected by the display (glasses) passes through the centre of the pupil and then works with the eye’s regular optics to focus the display on the retina, while light from the real-life environment reaches the retina via an outer filter.
This creates two separate images on the retina which are then superimposed to create one integrated image, or augmented reality.
iOptik still requires clearance from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the US.
Watch this video from Innovega showing how the iOptik lenses work below:
