Smart Contact Lenses: When Will They Arrive?
Over the past year, we have seen many companies come up with functional prototypes of smart contact lenses that support AR and digital features. One of the most prominent companies includes Mojo Vision, which showed off its smart contact lens prototype, the Mojo Lens, back in 2020.
The AR-based startup developed the Mojo Lens as a pair of smart, AR-based contact lenses that can show data like weather information, health information, scores of sports matches, and more in an augmented reality environment. The Mojo Lens uses a high-density monochrome MicroLED display, which is as small as a grain of sand, to show the information right in front of users’ eyes.
Earlier this year, Mojo Vision announced to bring its advanced Mojo Lens smart contact lens to general customers by partnering with the global sportswear brand Adidas. And now the company is reportedly looking for volunteers to test out its smart contact lenses before launching them commercially. If all goes right, we can expect the company to launch its smart contact lens as soon as next year.
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Another company that is working to develop smart contact lenses is InWith Corp. It showed off the first soft smart contact lens at this year’s CES, and it can correct a user’s vision using advanced autofocus technology. It is also capable of powering itself by leveraging users’ natural blinking. Apart from showing off its smart lens, InWith also highlighted the significance of such products for the Web3 and Metaverse era of the future.
Other than these, a recent report on the Global Smart Contact Lens market by a research firm named Global Market Vision suggests that companies like Sony, Google, and Samsung will become major players in the sector. Amongst others, Google has been developing smart contact lenses for a long time. The tech giant started working on the concept back in 2014. It announced a smart contact lens to monitor the glucose level in diabetic patients. Although the project was shut down due to unsatisfactory clinical results, the foundation still seems to be there, which Google can use to develop its own smart contact lens.
So, the concept of smart contact lenses could take off in the coming years, especially with the ever-increasing hype for the metaverse. The product could be useful for many users with vision problems and can enable them to experience AR environments in a new way. Although, we still don’t have the exact launch timeline. What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
