For the millions of people suffering with impaired vision due to eye disorders such as age-related macular degeneration and other diseases that cause low-vision, good news is on the way. A DARPA-funded project, led by scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, have developed a high-tech contact lens that will allow users a magnified view of the world, and when paired with the wink-controlled smart glasses, this combination can provide many of the individuals suffering from vision impairment with a flexible solution, giving them hope for better vision. These telescopic contact lenses are the first of their kind; found inside a 1.55mm thick lens, there’s a super thin reflective telescope where small mirrors bounce light around, increasing the perceived size of objects and can magnify the view up to 28 times! This technology can be compared to looking through a pair of low magnification binoculars, and since the first prototype in 2013, it has continuously been fine-tuned so it can be worn comfortably over longer periods of time.
The complementary wink-controlled smart glasses work in tandem with the contacts; they look like normal eyewear except they have a small light source detector. This light detector has the ability to recognize winks, but can ignore the blinks of the wearer’s eyes. The user can wink with the right eye for magnification, or a telescopic view of the world; and when they wink with the left eye, they are able to restore their vision back to normal, allowing the wearer the choice to turn on or off the magnification. Developers are still refining the mechanical and manufacturing processes, and continuing to work on improving image quality and oxygen penetrability, as the eyes require a steady supply of oxygen. Even though these contact lenses and glasses are still in prototype form, they could be on the market in the next few years, providing many with a long sought solution.