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'Smart Glasses' Automatically Adjust to Your Eyes

University of Utah engineers have created 'smart glasses' with liquid-based lenses that can automatically adjust the focus on what a person is seeing, whether it's far away or close up. The human eye has a lens inside that adjusts the focal depth depending on what you look at. As people age, the lens loses its ability to change focus, which is why many people require reading glasses to see objects up close and regular eyeglasses to see far away. The researchers created eyeglass lenses made of glycerin, a thick colorless liquid enclosed by flexible rubber-like membranes in the front and back. The rear membrane in each lens is connected to a series of three mechanical actuators that push the membrane back and forth like a transparent piston, changing the curvature of the liquid lens and therefore the focal length between the lens and the eye. The lenses are placed in special eyeglass frames with electronics and a battery to control and power the actuators. In the bridge of the glasses is a distance meter that measures the distance from the glasses to an object via pulses of infrared light.

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 if you have trouble seeing closeup and far away get ready to say goodbye to bif focals these prototype glasses will automatically adjust to your eyes so that you can see near far and everything in between liquid lenses and piso electric technology switch the view between two prescriptions by changing the lens curve and focal point users input their prescription into a

    00:00:25 smartphone app which then gets sent via Bluetooth to a microcontroller in one one stem of the glasses the other stem contains a battery a sensor between the eyes measures the distance to the focal point with that figured out a microcontroller sends a message to the battery telling it how much voltage to apply to achieve the right curve the voltage is proportional to the optical

    00:00:49 power so the higher the voltage the more curved the lens becomes piso electric strips line the lens rims since piso electric materials move when an electric field is applied they react to that voltage and push a pair of transparent Pistons that sit behind the lenses because the lenses are filled with liquid they become more convex as the Pistons push them forward and more

    00:01:14 concave as the Pistons move back when the degree of the lens curve changes so does the focal point this means that the lenses will adjust to whatever the user is looking at right now the glasses are a little bulky but the researchers are shifting their focus to streamlining the design