Utah Engineers Develop Smart Glasses with Automatic Focus Adjustment

 Utah Engineers Develop Smart Glasses with Automatic Focus Adjustment

A team of engineers from the University of Utah have created a pair of smart glasses with liquid-based lenses capable of automatically adjusting the focus on what the wearer is seeing, whether it's far away or close up.

The lenses are reportedly made from glycerin — a thick, colorless liquid enclosed by flexible rubber-like membranes in the front and back. The rear membrane is connected to a series of mechanical actuators that push the membrane back and forth, changing the curvature of the liquid lens and the focal length between the lens and eye.

According to the engineers, the lenses are then placed in specially-designed eyeglass frames featuring electronics to control and power the actuators. A distance meter is housed in the bridge of the glasses — when a wearer looks at an object, the meter instantly measures the distance between the glasses and object and tells the actuators how to curve the lenses.

The team is now reportedly working on a less bulky prototype to make the frames lighter and smaller, and hopes to have them in the market in as early as three years. A start-up company called Sharpeyes LLC has reportedly been created to commercialize the glasses.

The research was recently published in the journal Optics Express.

Click here to read the full press release.

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Source: University of Utah

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