This Eye-Tracking, Display-Enabled Contact Lenses Is Another Step Closer To Reality

The Mojo Lens is now ready for internal testing.

Mojo Vision’s technology is designed o function like a smartwatch and is an extension of AI. The lenses follow eye movement by sitting on your eye. The sensors, like on a smartwatch, can calculate that movement more accurately than VR or AR glasses can.

“Bluetooth LE was too chatty and power-hungry,” says Mojo Vision’s SVP of Product, Steve Sinclair, who walked me through the latest demos. “We had to create our own.” Mojo Vision’s wireless connection is in the 5GHz band, but Sinclair says the company still has work to do to make sure the wireless connection doesn’t receive or cause interference. 

“A phone does not have the radio that we require,” Sinclair says. “It needs to be somewhat near the head because of the transmit power of the lens.” He says the tech could be built into a helmet or even glasses, but right now a neckband-type device made the most practical sense.

It’s not easy to figure out how to move exactly right, but I’m not even trying these lenses the way they’re

The Mojo Lens has a small Arm Core M0 processor on the lens that handles encrypted data running on and off the lens and power management. The neckband computer will run the applications, interpret eye-tracking data and update image placement in 10-millisecond loops.

Mojo Vision’s CEO, Drew Perkins, will wear the lens in-eye first. Then, the company’s other executives. 

“We could imagine low-vision users having a second higher-resolution camera built into a pair of glasses or hanging over their ear — they look at something and it takes a really high-resolution picture and then it just appears in their eyes, and then they can pan and zoom and see things,” Sinclair says about the future. Mojo Vision’s not there yet but testing these eye-tracking wearable micro-displays is going to be the start.

“We have work to do to make it a product. It’s not a product,” Sinclair emphasizes where the Mojo Vision lenses are at. “I’d be nervous about being the first person to try in-eye testing of these lenses, but why wouldn’t I be? This type of tech has never existed before. Only one other company I know of, InWith, is working on smart contact lenses.”

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