Engineers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany have developed a pair of smart sunglasses powered by colored, semi-transparent solar cells applied to its lenses.
According to engineers, the solar cell lenses have a thickness of about 1.6 millimeters and weight about six grams, similar to the specs of traditional sunglasses. The organic solar cells applied to the lenses reportedly generate enough power for a microprocessor and two displays in the sunglasses, which are integrated into the sunglasses' temples, that display the illumination intensity and ambient temperature as bar graphs.
The Solar Glasses can also reportedly work in indoor environments under illumination down to 500 Lux — the normal illumination for an office or living area. Under those conditions, each of the smart lenses can reportedly still generate 200 microwatts of electric power, which is enough to operate devices such as a hearing aid or step counter.
A case study on the research project was recently published in the journal Energy Technology.
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Source: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)