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CEO test-drives Mojo Vision's smart augmented reality contact lens
- anewpersonality 4y ago
- windexh8er 4y agoI'm sure I'm not the target market - but: I don't want this. This technology has a use case, I'm sure. But it's not me. I want less distraction, less way for crappy social media companies to mine me. No thanks.
- tootie 4y agoImpressive. The usefulness of this kind of device is probably completely distinct from what you'd get with anything coming from Apple or Meta. Purely functional sight augmentation. Looks they're going for the sight-impaired market first, but I can imagine some uses in industry or military too.
- Closi 4y agoCall me skeptical, but looking at that photograph it looks nothing like something I want to put in my eyes. This product is way too much of a moonshot - the product is nowhere near ready for consumers, the technology doesn't appear to be there, and I can't imagine them being able to release anything other than a tech demo for many years. There is a reason that all the research in contact lenses to date has been to make them as light and thin as possible. Companies can't really make a standard contact lens that lasts more than a month without compromising on comfort and it sliding around your eyeball - so how we think they are going to solve that PLUS add a battery and a load of electronics and make it something people will actually want to wear is a mystery to me. No doubt eventually this level of technology will come, but I can't see it coming in the timelines required for Mojo to be a commercial success (unless there is some other plan to commercialise the IP).
- bergenty 4y agoThey have a functioning prototype. Who are you and why does your opinion matter? (I’m just sick of skepticism automatically being associated with intelligence).
- Sebguer 4y agoI have a pretty cut and dry rule of not putting anything that can catch fire directly on my eyeball.
- bergenty 4y agoPeople said the same thing about LASIK.
- echelon 4y agoLASIK is a one and done operation performed under the careful supervision of a doctor, and it has been tried and tested hundreds of thousands of times. The probability of failure for this device is nonzero and and increases the longer you wear it. The failure modes are potentially disastrous, and there's likely no medical personnel nearby to intervene.
- birdman3131 4y agoAnecdotal but lasik seriously messed with my dads eyesight for over a year. And he drove an OTR truck (at night quite a bit). Had he been aware how bad it was and that it only lasted 10 years or so he said he would have stuck to glasses.
- LooseMarmoset 4y agoI had lasik in 1999. I was legally blind (uncorrected) in my left eye, and needed a pretty serious correction in my right eye. After lasik, my vision was 20/15 (left) and 20/10 (right). Now, in 2022, I still have no need of glasses, although I'd say my vision has degraded somewhat - still good enough to pass the driver exam uncorrected, however. Night vision is objectively worse after lasik. Poorer light sensitivity, and for the first year, I had halos and starbursts around night light sources, especially when my eyes were tired/dry. This improved over time, however. I'd do it all over again if I had to. I couldn't wear contacts anymore, they hurt my eyes, and I got used to navigating like a blind person when I didn't have my glasses, so lasik is a miraculous improvement.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoSoftware is eating the world but the future world is made with hardware. Companies like these are the future.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pedrovhb 4y agoI've been wanting for this forever (though I imagine I'll be waiting quite a bit more still). How does it deal with the eye shifting focus? Would you have to unfocus your eyes to be able to see it? That'd probably be uncomfortable.
- colordrops 4y agoPerhaps the focus is always like 5 feet in front of you?
- euroderf 4y agoSo then does it so confuse your brain that your normal focusing is interfered with ?
- colordrops 4y agoI'd imagine it would be like having a transparent sheet in front of you. Probably no more confusing than a HUD on a transparent windshield.
- euroderf 4y agoI haven't seen one of those.
- XorNot 4y agoThis feels like tech skipping a step - I'm not sure how building a contact lens is possible, but building say, a pair of standard looking glasses is not.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoI think this is right overall. Making an AR headset requires serious compute and power and there’s no way that will fit in a contact lens anytime soon. This demo is a HUD, which is much easier and already solved by glasses. So I think this tech is way early for practical use-cases. On the other hand, AR glasses have some challenges of their own. Allowing the user to see through the lens and focus their eyes on the world around them while seamlessly displaying on top of it is a major engineering challenge which is mostly unsolved. Setting the distance between the display and the eye to zero and locking the display to the eye position makes this easier in several ways. It would solve the field of view issue. I just don’t see how you pull it off without having your eye connected to a puck by a fiber optic cable. I think you need several generations of improvements in semiconductor and display tech to fit everything in the contact lens, even if it’s just a wireless receiver and display for an image that’s rendered somewhere else. But it’s good that there’s people working on it to push the tech on the right direction.
- maerF0x0 4y agoassuming a wireless way of transmitting to the contact lens i'm not sure the value of putting all the compute in the lens vs having it external like say your mobile phone. it's like bluetooth headphones, but for your monitor instead...
- zamadatix 4y agoYou still need a great deal of processing for the signal and image stabilization/readings from the sensors. This test version gets away with the M0 for that (well, as much as one can say that looking at the lens) because it only has ~61k of on/off pixels to make a HUD, which also doesn't need to be refreshed often just restabilized locally. Typical AR headsets get away with not having to deal with stabilizing eye movements, more place to stuff processing anyways, and no concern on being able to receive massive bandwidth video streams for more lively content.
- roughly 4y ago> a green monochrome MicroLED display measuring less than 0.5 mm (0.02 in) in diameter, with a resolution of 14,000 pixels per inch So, that's 280px at the widest part of the display, and a total of ~62k pixels, right? There's a decent amount you can do with that, but I think even the demo picture in the PR shot's probably ambitious for the amount of data this can display.
- causality0 4y agoThe fact they didn't give an actual pixel count makes me think they mean 14,000 per square inch, which with these measurements means four pixels.
- jhardy54 4y agoDid I math wrong? 0.02 in * 0.02 in == 0.0004 sq in 0.0004 sq in * 14000 ppi == 5.6 pixels
- bruckie 4y agoYou assumed square. Round gives 4 pixels: π(.02/2)^2 * 14000 = 4.4
- bornfreddy 4y agoIt's probably 14000 ppi, not pixels per _square_ inch. So that's 0.02 in * 14000 in each direction (which is 280 x 280 pixels).
- zamadatix 4y ago"Much to my delight, I found I could interact with a compass to find my bearings, view images, and use an on-screen teleprompter to read a surprising but familiar quote." It would seem difficult to view images or read a teleprompter via 4 pixels. More likely they mean exactly what they wrote - 0.02 inches at 14,000 pixels per inch.
- ghostly_s 4y agoThis has got to be a contender for most-uselessly framed statistic ever. I considered they might do some fancy interpolation w/ the saccades of the eye to simulate a larger display, mimicking our eyes own tricks, but it doesn't seem that's possible if the display is saccading along with the rest of the eyeball? I'm also confused about what useful 'stabilizing' their sensors can do when the display only covers a small point in the center of the pupil.
- GaltMidas 4y agoHow does he blink? From the picture it looks like his eyelid would have to be stretched out over the device with his fingers.
- jumboshrimp 4y agoThere is no blinking in the future.
- ricardobeat 4y agoI know this is against HN rules, but what's up with all these comments who clearly have not made a minimal effort to read the article? It is a 600-word piece, not a research paper. > this is all kept so extraordinarily slim and compact that you can stick it on your eyeball and still stretch your eyelid over top of it without the use of a shoehorn Hard lenses are something like 1.5mm thick, plenty of space for modern electronics.
- gumby 4y agoI have to say I appreciate their choice of green display. It has a lovely retro ASCII-terminal vibe that brings back memories of long hours in front of a terminal. Also ties into the films of that era (robocop-ish -- not sure that was green -- and even the Matrix).
- 14 4y agoI know the battery must be small and they say medical grade but I would be very worried putting any battery next to my eyeball. If some how you get knocked in the eye does it react? I guess if there was a medical reason to wear this I would consider it but just for fun I think I will wait until it’s shown some reliability.
- balaji1 4y agoHere's an idea for a AR device: It will be a wearable glass like Google Glass - it holds majority of the processors, sensors, battery and networking radio. This wearable can be built to very high quality today. Now for overlaying AR content - Use a low power laser (mounted on the frame) to project on the retina directly. This is the harder unsolved tech. Low power laser would project a monochrome image as in the contact lens device mentioned in the article. Eventually this laser could be replaced by a LED projector.
- vorpalhex 4y agoBattery life killed google glass. Even very weak lasers are probably not good to shine all day into an eye.
- balaji1 4y agoThen more compute has to be moved off the wearable. And bulkier wearable for bigger battery. Maybe the retina is sensitive enough for really low power lasers. But contact lens seems more complex tho. Also Google Glass probably had other problems, it was ahead of time. And it was not really AR, you had to focus on the image inside the glass or the outside world.
- mediamogul 4y ago
- ggm 4y agoI'd like to see an attempt by the subject to work with an artist to draw what they experienced. I believe what we're seeing is external "takes" on what people subjectively think it looked like, not a subject-centric view. Where the virtual field projects in 3-space. How it moves with head and eye movements, and focal shifts. What apparent pixel resolution it had, not the imputed DPI, the experiental effect of the actual pixelcount in the field. Did it flicker. Did it rainbow. Otherwise, Did it promote Nausea. Did it fail to blank when the eyelid was shut. Did it shut off, when wanted to be on.
- robinduckett 4y agoSounded like it was a static monochrome image and the 3D space stuff will come later. Do they even have an accelerometer or gyro in the device or does it pair with a phone or other device to get those readings? Are they even integrated into the software at this time. I suspect not.
- ricardobeat 4y agoFrom the article, 3rd and 4th paragraphs: > It's got an ARM Core M0 processor, a 5-GHz radio capable of communicating at ultra-low latency, and enough accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers to track your eye movements with extreme precision, allowing the image to stay stable even as you move your eyes around. > you won't need hand controls, or a smartphone, or even Meta's crazy nerve-hijacking control inputs to control it – Mojo Vision has designed a hands-free user interface controlled by your own eye movements
- tmp_anon_22 4y agoDo I want a 5ghz radio broadcasting from my eyeball?
- detritus 4y ago5Ghz apiece from each eyeball and i've got a nicely nanowave-warmed septum, thanks.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- maerF0x0 4y agoMy dream application: Google maps hud for when I go motorcycling. Right now the options are 1) Mount an arm to the handlebar and risk my phone detaching or breaking in a crash 2) phone is in my pocket so I can hear instructions, but not see the screen. having my phone in my jacket pocket, but transmitting to my contact lens would be pretty great.
- sam_bristow 4y agoFor a motorbike setup I'd imagine integrating into the visor of a helmet would be an easier option than a contact lenses. Is there anything a helmet-based option wouldn't provide?
- azinman2 4y agoThere have been helmets like that in the past. I think they went under.
- lallysingh 4y agoA few attempts, but most fogged before release. One that got released, the crosshelmet, had significant problems with stabization. Vibration on motorcycles is significant.
- aeternum 4y agoAudio is pretty good for motorcycles. There are some good in-helmet mic+speaker options that let you use Siri/voice commands to navigate.
- aeturnum 4y agoThere are several companies that make motorcycle huds that integrate with helmets.
- justinclift 4y agoExamples from a quick search: * https://arvrtips.com/eyeride-hud/ https://arvrtips.com/eyeride-hud/ * https://shop.crosshelmet.com/ https://shop.crosshelmet.com/ * https://www.dvision-hud.com/en https://www.dvision-hud.com/en * https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-tech/shoei-opticson-hud-display-helmet/ https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-tech/shoei-opticson-...
- zamadatix 4y agoI'd love to try this out, it'd be really fun. At the same time I think it's easily a decade out before it'd be far enough along to be worth trying a second time. Good to see we're testing the waters though, working towards things makes them appear faster than just waiting for them to be ready by happenstance.
- ape4 4y agoIt would be cool if you could look thru the car like fighter pilots can. See thru the pillars and other obstructions.
- euroderf 4y agoOr if you could "see thru" the person you're talking to, by getting a face match, doing an interwebz search, and finding out the person is a fraudster. Real-time utility.
- d--b 4y ago> His comments on the experience were pretty succinct: "After completing preclinical testing and mitigating potential safety risks, I wore Mojo Lens," Perkins said in a blog post. "Much to my delight, I found I could interact with a compass to find my bearings, view images, and use an on-screen teleprompter to read a surprising but familiar quote. I experienced firsthand the future with Invisible Computing ... Wearing the lens was inspiring. Seeing the future literally put me at a loss for words." So right now, he is able to see some stuff. That’s already quite impressive, but yes I think we’re far from AR
- jossclimb 4y agoIt's a big fat pass for me. I already have enough devices vying for my attention. When I go outside it's one of the very chances I have to get a break from the attention economy.
- radu_floricica 4y agoThat's a sour grapes reaction if I've ever seen one. "Oh, those billionaires with their fancy yachts, you wouldn't catch me dead in one". This tech is probably a couple of years away from being useful in very specific niches, and in all likelihood about a decade from regular street use. Until then, good luck getting your hands on one, let alone having it vie for your attention. And then... you can just not wear one. I'm sorry for being a bit abrasive, but I've never understood this kind of negativity, and on HN of all places. Outdoor advertising is getting a huge slice of our attention, and we're worried about contact lens prototypes? Is this a cool tech forum or what?
- luckystarr 4y agoLenses like this were called "Scleral lenses"[1] in Niven's 1992 novel "The California Voodoo Game". We're not there yet, but are getting closer. [1] http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1496 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1496
- aahortwwy 4y agoScleral lenses are just contact lenses that sit on the sclera. They exist and are used for vision correction by people with certain eye conditions. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleral_lens https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleral_lens Mojo’s lenses do have a scleral design which makes sense, it’s one of the more comfortable hard contact designs (though quite invasive).
- sollewitt 4y agoDoes anyone know how they are doing lensing? I know smart phone senses are magic compared to what was possible twenty years ago, is this borrowing tech from there?) (You can't just put a screen on your eyeball, you can't focus that close)
- tpoacher 4y ago"My vision is augmented" ~ JC Denton
- m00dy 4y agoyesterday, I tried oculus quest 2 for the first time and I can tell you that we are really far away from having this in our daily life. I'm talking about decades.
- GiorgioG 4y agoMy eyes are my most critical sensory input devices. I wouldn’t risk putting anything like this in direct contact with them all day. If your phone battery catches fire, you might get a nasty burn on the leg (assuming it was in a pant pocket), but this practically guarantees you lose your vision. If they can miniaturize it to this point, they can probably put it on glasses.
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago> (...) micro-battery (...) which will be big enough to run the thing all day long in the final product version Uh-oh. No it won't. This is dead.
- loudmax 4y agoAugmented reality contact lenses feature prominently in the 2006 science fiction novel Rainbows End. The novel isn't really about the technical details of AR, but more about people living in a society in which they're able to construct mutually exclusive shared imaginary "realities", or belief circles. In some ways it predicts the divisions brought on by social networks. Also features artificial intelligence and other near future technologies. It's written by Vernor Vinge, who wrote A Fire Upon the Deep, and its prequel A Deepness in the Sky.