Omnifocal eyeglasses: Impractical or future reality?
Imagine a pair of eyeglasses that can tell the distance at which you are trying to focus by the distance between the pupils of your eyes. Then imagine the same glasses with optics that have an electrically-alterable refractive index that can bring objects into focus at any distance.
Deep Optics Ltd. (Raanana, Israel), has done and thus invented the omnifocal eyeglasses (see Video: Sensors, liquid crystals make "omnifocal" glasses). Unfortunately the idea has been launched by way of a Youtube video and a website that has been inoperative for several days.
The video is an animation rather than real-world footage, which suggests prototypes are not yet available, and leaves me searching near and far for answers to a number of questions.
Such as:
Do the omnifocals need calibrating for a particular wearer and how is that calibration achieved and maintained.
What is the power source for the sensors, processor unit and liquid crystal manipulation? Batteries that make for bulky eyeglasses? Energy harvesting from head motion?
How often does that power source have to be recharged? Is it wireless recharging?
Is the processor neuromorphic, as this would seem a good use case for a learning processor?
How do the glasses work if someone is in a darkened room – working with a tablet in bed for example?
Hopefully Deep Optics has not run aground and its engineers are just too busy working on the omnifocal technology to refresh the website.
If not, perhaps some other company could pick up this idea because I, and millions of others, could surely use a pair of omnifocal eyeglasses.
We shall see.
Deep Optics Ltd.: www.deepoptics.com
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Video: Sensors, liquid crystals make "omnifocal" glasses
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