The World's First 'Feature-Complete' Smart Contact Lens Demonstrated

26/06/2022

When people can create smaller chips, the possibilities widen. This is because people can cramp more things into smaller spaces.

When smartphones can be considered resized computers, a smart contact lens should be considered a shrunken AR goggle.

And here, Mojo Vision demonstrated that its device, when held in front of an eye, can display real-time information text and images directly to the users' eye.

To showcase this technology, Drew Perkings, its CEO, has worn the functioning smart contact lens and used it for around one hour.

While the device is still a prototype, Mojo Vision managed to squeeze many small circuits into such a small device, thin enough to be worn on the eyes.

At this time, the smart contact lens is "feature complete," meaning that the company managed to make it functional.

Mojo Vision CEO uses Mojo Lens
Drew Perkings using Mojo Vision contact lenses.

The device include:

  1. A monochrome microLED that has a 14,000 pixel-per-inch display, measuring less than 0.5mm in diameter with a pixel-pitch of 1.8 microns.
  2. An image sensor for seeing the surroundings and processing them through computer vision.
  3. Eye-tracking sensors that include accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer.
  4. A battery system.
  5. A 5Ghz radio communication antenna to make the lens communicate with an external unit.
  6. An ARM processor, that acts as a "traffic cop" for the data.
Mojo Vision CEO uses Mojo Lens
The "feature complete" lens still lacks the iris cosmetics.

It's worth noting that despite being able to project data directly to users; eyes, the device itself doesn't have its own processor.

To compute, it needs to communicate to an outside processing unit. This process requires data transaction via radio waves with an external computational module.

These contact lenses won't just display text. With embedded sensors and outside processing, the lenses can sense objects, track eye motion, have an eye-controlled interface that can access data like a smartwatch or smartglasses.

"The Mojo Lens will be able to help people who have low-vision conditions, like macular degeneration, glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, which is a type of tunnel vision, night blindness," said Steve Sinclair, vice president of product and marketing at Mojo Vision.

"We've built a lens that can help them, but it can also give those of us that don't have those conditions, in a way, superpowers to be able to see things that you otherwise wouldn't be able to see."

The communication uses what's called the Mojo protocol, which is designed for the lowest possible power consumption of the lens to conserve its batteries and minimize latency. The Mojo protocol is supposed to be more efficient and faster than Bluetooth LE.

And as for the batteries, they are expected to last about two hours of continuous use. Mojo Vision’s goal is for Mojo Lens to last a day with normal use. Charging the lens is simply done via its cleaning container.

Mojo Lens
The structure of the Mojo lens.

The project first came to light a few years earlier.

At the time, Mojo Vision created a tiny lens mounted on a plastic wand. The lens at its initial stage, was able to display made from transparent plastic with a text, like time and sports score, weather, heart rate and more, through a pin-sized glowing green dot.

The device was like a part of smartglasses, but significantly smaller.

At that time, during CES, Mojo Vision didn't catch much attention, simply because the company wasn't officially a part of CES, and that more people were attracted to VR technologies, like those provided by Oculus.

"We didn't want to get overhyped and show something that was just vaporware," said Sinclair at the time.

Mojo Vision, a company founded in 2017, has been in stealth for years, promising a seemingly impossible set of smart AR contact lenses.

"We've been very focused on this concept we call invisible computing," Sinclair says about Mojo Vision. "Which is the idea that I get information when I need it, and the technology fades away when I don't."

Following the revelation, Mojo Vision plans on creating a multicolor display, and with two lenses in, hoping to make projected images look stereoscopic.