I'd like to see an attempt by the subject to work with an artist to draw what they experienced. I believe what we're seeing is external "takes" on what people subjectively think it looked like, not a subject-centric view.
Where the virtual field projects in 3-space. How it moves with head and eye movements, and focal shifts. What apparent pixel resolution it had, not the imputed DPI, the experiental effect of the actual pixelcount in the field.
Did it flicker. Did it rainbow.
Otherwise, Did it promote Nausea. Did it fail to blank when the eyelid was shut. Did it shut off, when wanted to be on.
Sounded like it was a static monochrome image and the 3D space stuff will come later. Do they even have an accelerometer or gyro in the device or does it pair with a phone or other device to get those readings? Are they even integrated into the software at this time. I suspect not.
Call me skeptical, but looking at that photograph it looks nothing like something I want to put in my eyes.
This product is way too much of a moonshot - the product is nowhere near ready for consumers, the technology doesn't appear to be there, and I can't imagine them being able to release anything other than a tech demo for many years.
There is a reason that all the research in contact lenses to date has been to make them as light and thin as possible.
Companies can't really make a standard contact lens that lasts more than a month without compromising on comfort and it sliding around your eyeball - so how we think they are going to solve that PLUS add a battery and a load of electronics and make it something people will actually want to wear is a mystery to me.
No doubt eventually this level of technology will come, but I can't see it coming in the timelines required for Mojo to be a commercial success (unless there is some other plan to commercialise the IP).
They have a functioning prototype. Who are you and why does your opinion matter? (I’m just sick of skepticism automatically being associated with intelligence).
I assume the military is the first anticipated customer. Apparently they've been at it for seven years, presumably supported by military R&D contracts.
I'd wear a vibrator up my ass all day if that thing was made for me first instead of the company. The way things are right now, none of these AR/VR/AI/PA products will succeed, and if they do, it will be in a dystopian future.
Same I think its really skeptical that they have the economies of scale to produce ephemeral contact lenses that gets thrown out after a month.
Even an AR glass that looks natural and works well with changing focus is tough to pull off, it's puzzling why they would skip that and go into a almost guaranteed failure. AR contact lenses are still a good 20+ years away and even then it will be hard pressed for adoption because contact lenses aren't very popular and its obvious as to why.
For a motorbike setup I'd imagine integrating into the visor of a helmet would be an easier option than a contact lenses. Is there anything a helmet-based option wouldn't provide?
I use my Apple Watch which displays large format directions during navigation and gives you a little tap on the wrist when you're nearing a turn. Works great for driving cars or motorcycles, riding bikes, and walking.
I have to say I appreciate their choice of green display. It has a lovely retro ASCII-terminal vibe that brings back memories of long hours in front of a terminal. Also ties into the films of that era (robocop-ish -- not sure that was green -- and even the Matrix).
My eyes are my most critical sensory input devices. I wouldn’t risk putting anything like this in direct contact with them all day. If your phone battery catches fire, you might get a nasty burn on the leg (assuming it was in a pant pocket), but this practically guarantees you lose your vision. If they can miniaturize it to this point, they can probably put it on glasses.
> a green monochrome MicroLED display measuring less than 0.5 mm (0.02 in) in diameter, with a resolution of 14,000 pixels per inch
So, that's 280px at the widest part of the display, and a total of ~62k pixels, right? There's a decent amount you can do with that, but I think even the demo picture in the PR shot's probably ambitious for the amount of data this can display.
This has got to be a contender for most-uselessly framed statistic ever. I considered they might do some fancy interpolation w/ the saccades of the eye to simulate a larger display, mimicking our eyes own tricks, but it doesn't seem that's possible if the display is saccading along with the rest of the eyeball? I'm also confused about what useful 'stabilizing' their sensors can do when the display only covers a small point in the center of the pupil.
Impressive. The usefulness of this kind of device is probably completely distinct from what you'd get with anything coming from Apple or Meta. Purely functional sight augmentation. Looks they're going for the sight-impaired market first, but I can imagine some uses in industry or military too.
> His comments on the experience were pretty succinct: "After completing preclinical testing and mitigating potential safety risks, I wore Mojo Lens," Perkins said in a blog post. "Much to my delight, I found I could interact with a compass to find my bearings, view images, and use an on-screen teleprompter to read a surprising but familiar quote. I experienced firsthand the future with Invisible Computing ... Wearing the lens was inspiring. Seeing the future literally put me at a loss for words."
So right now, he is able to see some stuff. That’s already quite impressive, but yes I think we’re far from AR
Augmented reality contact lenses feature prominently in the 2006 science fiction novel Rainbows End. The novel isn't really about the technical details of AR, but more about people living in a society in which they're able to construct mutually exclusive shared imaginary "realities", or belief circles. In some ways it predicts the divisions brought on by social networks. Also features artificial intelligence and other near future technologies.
It's written by Vernor Vinge, who wrote A Fire Upon the Deep, and its prequel A Deepness in the Sky.
I'd love to try this out, it'd be really fun. At the same time I think it's easily a decade out before it'd be far enough along to be worth trying a second time. Good to see we're testing the waters though, working towards things makes them appear faster than just waiting for them to be ready by happenstance.
I know the battery must be small and they say medical grade but I would be very worried putting any battery next to my eyeball. If some how you get knocked in the eye does it react? I guess if there was a medical reason to wear this I would consider it but just for fun I think I will wait until it’s shown some reliability.
Or if you could "see thru" the person you're talking to, by getting a face match, doing an interwebz search, and finding out the person is a fraudster. Real-time utility.
Does anyone know how they are doing lensing? I know smart phone senses are magic compared to what was possible twenty years ago, is this borrowing tech from there?)
(You can't just put a screen on your eyeball, you can't focus that close)
That's a sour grapes reaction if I've ever seen one. "Oh, those billionaires with their fancy yachts, you wouldn't catch me dead in one".
This tech is probably a couple of years away from being useful in very specific niches, and in all likelihood about a decade from regular street use. Until then, good luck getting your hands on one, let alone having it vie for your attention. And then... you can just not wear one.
I'm sorry for being a bit abrasive, but I've never understood this kind of negativity, and on HN of all places. Outdoor advertising is getting a huge slice of our attention, and we're worried about contact lens prototypes? Is this a cool tech forum or what?
This feels like tech skipping a step - I'm not sure how building a contact lens is possible, but building say, a pair of standard looking glasses is not.
I think this is right overall. Making an AR headset requires serious compute and power and there’s no way that will fit in a contact lens anytime soon. This demo is a HUD, which is much easier and already solved by glasses. So I think this tech is way early for practical use-cases.
On the other hand, AR glasses have some challenges of their own. Allowing the user to see through the lens and focus their eyes on the world around them while seamlessly displaying on top of it is a major engineering challenge which is mostly unsolved. Setting the distance between the display and the eye to zero and locking the display to the eye position makes this easier in several ways. It would solve the field of view issue. I just don’t see how you pull it off without having your eye connected to a puck by a fiber optic cable. I think you need several generations of improvements in semiconductor and display tech to fit everything in the contact lens, even if it’s just a wireless receiver and display for an image that’s rendered somewhere else. But it’s good that there’s people working on it to push the tech on the right direction.
[+] [-] ggm|3 years ago|reply
Where the virtual field projects in 3-space. How it moves with head and eye movements, and focal shifts. What apparent pixel resolution it had, not the imputed DPI, the experiental effect of the actual pixelcount in the field.
Did it flicker. Did it rainbow.
Otherwise, Did it promote Nausea. Did it fail to blank when the eyelid was shut. Did it shut off, when wanted to be on.
[+] [-] robinduckett|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Closi|3 years ago|reply
This product is way too much of a moonshot - the product is nowhere near ready for consumers, the technology doesn't appear to be there, and I can't imagine them being able to release anything other than a tech demo for many years.
There is a reason that all the research in contact lenses to date has been to make them as light and thin as possible.
Companies can't really make a standard contact lens that lasts more than a month without compromising on comfort and it sliding around your eyeball - so how we think they are going to solve that PLUS add a battery and a load of electronics and make it something people will actually want to wear is a mystery to me.
No doubt eventually this level of technology will come, but I can't see it coming in the timelines required for Mojo to be a commercial success (unless there is some other plan to commercialise the IP).
[+] [-] bergenty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aikinai|3 years ago|reply
My mom’s worn the same (hard) contacts for decades.
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jotm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezekiel11|3 years ago|reply
Even an AR glass that looks natural and works well with changing focus is tough to pull off, it's puzzling why they would skip that and go into a almost guaranteed failure. AR contact lenses are still a good 20+ years away and even then it will be hard pressed for adoption because contact lenses aren't very popular and its obvious as to why.
[+] [-] pedrovhb|3 years ago|reply
How does it deal with the eye shifting focus? Would you have to unfocus your eyes to be able to see it? That'd probably be uncomfortable.
[+] [-] colordrops|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|3 years ago|reply
Right now the options are 1) Mount an arm to the handlebar and risk my phone detaching or breaking in a crash
2) phone is in my pocket so I can hear instructions, but not see the screen.
having my phone in my jacket pocket, but transmitting to my contact lens would be pretty great.
[+] [-] sam_bristow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhugo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeturnum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeternum|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pedalpete|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Svoka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GiorgioG|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roughly|3 years ago|reply
So, that's 280px at the widest part of the display, and a total of ~62k pixels, right? There's a decent amount you can do with that, but I think even the demo picture in the PR shot's probably ambitious for the amount of data this can display.
[+] [-] ghostly_s|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] causality0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luckystarr|3 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1496
[+] [-] aahortwwy|3 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scleral_lens
Mojo’s lenses do have a scleral design which makes sense, it’s one of the more comfortable hard contact designs (though quite invasive).
[+] [-] tootie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elil17|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilrwbwrkhv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] d--b|3 years ago|reply
So right now, he is able to see some stuff. That’s already quite impressive, but yes I think we’re far from AR
[+] [-] loudmax|3 years ago|reply
It's written by Vernor Vinge, who wrote A Fire Upon the Deep, and its prequel A Deepness in the Sky.
[+] [-] zamadatix|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 14|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ape4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] euroderf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sollewitt|3 years ago|reply
(You can't just put a screen on your eyeball, you can't focus that close)
[+] [-] jossclimb|3 years ago|reply
I already have enough devices vying for my attention. When I go outside it's one of the very chances I have to get a break from the attention economy.
[+] [-] radu_floricica|3 years ago|reply
This tech is probably a couple of years away from being useful in very specific niches, and in all likelihood about a decade from regular street use. Until then, good luck getting your hands on one, let alone having it vie for your attention. And then... you can just not wear one.
I'm sorry for being a bit abrasive, but I've never understood this kind of negativity, and on HN of all places. Outdoor advertising is getting a huge slice of our attention, and we're worried about contact lens prototypes? Is this a cool tech forum or what?
[+] [-] XorNot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fshbbdssbbgdd|3 years ago|reply
On the other hand, AR glasses have some challenges of their own. Allowing the user to see through the lens and focus their eyes on the world around them while seamlessly displaying on top of it is a major engineering challenge which is mostly unsolved. Setting the distance between the display and the eye to zero and locking the display to the eye position makes this easier in several ways. It would solve the field of view issue. I just don’t see how you pull it off without having your eye connected to a puck by a fiber optic cable. I think you need several generations of improvements in semiconductor and display tech to fit everything in the contact lens, even if it’s just a wireless receiver and display for an image that’s rendered somewhere else. But it’s good that there’s people working on it to push the tech on the right direction.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sdfhdhjdw3|3 years ago|reply
Uh-oh. No it won't. This is dead.