In 2014 and 2015, Samsung Electronics applied for patents related to smart contact lenses in Korea and the United States. It was patented in 2016 and 2019 respectively.
▲Samsung’s smart contact lens domestic patent application ( 10-2016-0141586 )
Domestic patent application does not involve display unit while American patent application involves it. Research to put displays in contact lenses began in 2011. Because it is an attractive goal, many researches have been conducted in various ways. Several attempts have been made to start-ups such as Innovega's iOptik, which received DARPA funding from several university studies, but it is not very successful yet.
▲Mojo Vision
▲Mojo Vision Roadmap
This time, a start-up called Mojo Vision announced that it would really make a smart lens for AR. It is a smart lens that ended with putting in only one LED from 2011 to 2017. However, there are numerous problems with smart lens such as heat problems, biocompatibility problems, power supply problems, signal transmission problems, positioning problems, focus problems, thickness problems, etc., because the development of technology is not enough.
Innovega's iOptik that was mentioned earlier uses glasses on the lenses and the beam from the glasses and forms an image on the lenses. It is exciting to see what will happen to this Mojo Vision.
The AR technologies we looked at earlier can be seen as being released after being trapped by the limitations of the device. It was only when a good device called a smartphone appeared that it was able to reach us. When the era of anyone using smart glasses comes, how will AR approach us?
In the recent IT industry, it has become a hot topic to provide chairs worth over 1 million Korean won as office chairs for office workers. It is said that it was a decision for work efficiency and employee welfare, and employee satisfaction was also excellent.
If the era of smart lenses guaranteeing work efficiency comes in the future, will there be a hot topic by distributing smart lenses to all employees?