News on Google’s Project Glass just keeps coming and coming. It’s no surprise that we’re extremely excited and interested in the AR tech, but now we will hopefully be learning addition details early next week. Wednesday we shared details about the VIP treatment we will be getting for pre-ordering a pair at Google IO for around $1,500 — and that treatment is about to start come Monday.
Google and their official +Project Glass Google+ account has just reached out to all the Explorer Edition buyers, confirming that we’ll be learning additional details in a private Google+ Hangout Monday. This will include other lucky pre-order customers, as well as members from Google’s Project Glass team. Hopefully while engaging in a live Google+ hangout with actual developers from Google we’ll be able to learn some neat new things about Project Glass. Obviously we will let you know the minute we hear anything worth mentioning.
Project Glass made a huge splash at Google IO, when Sergey Brin took the stage and had a pair of the AR eyewear skydiving right into the event center in San Francisco. Since then we’ve seen plenty of patents, learned a few more details, and even saw Gmail’s lead developer head to the Project Glass crew. Stay tuned for additional details and hit the timeline below for further coverage.
Scientists have offered a vision of the future of augmented reality with a contact lens featuring an LCD display.
A team of researchers at the European research lab Imec and Ghent University in Belgium have developed a prototype contact lense featuring liquid crystal display (LCD) technology used in screens found in tablets, laptops and TVs.
The spherical display fits onto a contact lense and can overlay images directly onto a person's field of vision.
This has been achieved in the past using light emitting diode (LED) technology, but the display has been limited to just a few small pixels. By using LCD-based technology, it is possible to cover the entire field of vision, opening intriguing uses in medical and consumer applications.
Currently, the technology can only display small amounts of information, with an initial prototype displaying just a dollar sign on the lens. More elaborate images could be made possible in the future, according to the researchers.
For example, it may be possible to control the light transmission reaching a patient's retina in the case of damage.
Companies such as Google and Microsoft have already been developing augmented reality devices for eyesight, with proof of concept devices generating large amounts of interest.
Overlaying heads-up displays (HUDs) using contact lenses would also be a possibility, and the market for wearable electronics is already forecast to reach $6 billion by 2016, according to analysts.
According to the scientists, devices suitable for consumer use could be available in just a few years now that the basic technology had been proven.
The main difficulty in producing the lenses has been to create a LCD that was not only flexible, but formed into a spherical shape.
“Normally, flexible displays using liquid crystal cells are not designed to be formed into a new shape, especially not a spherical one. Thus, the main challenge was to create a very thin, spherically curved substrate with active layers that could withstand the extreme molding processes,” said Jelle De Smet, the main researcher on the project.
He added that thin polymer films had to be engineered to enable the necessary smoothness required to display an image on the curved display.
“By using new kinds of conductive polymers and integrating them into a smooth spherical cell, we were able to fabricate a new LCD-based contact lens display,” De Smet said.
Another researcher, Professor Robert De Smet, said that the research paves the way for the development and commercialisation of the technology.
"Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working twoards real applications, possibly available in only a few years time," he said.
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