‘Autofocus’ glasses promise sharp vision, close or far

They look like a simple pair of glasses-but these are tech-pack specs.

On a zoom call, Nico Eden, the chief executive and co-founder of the Finnish Ivier firm IXI, captures the frame with a lens with liquid crystal, which means their vision-shades can change on the fly.

This one pair can cure the vision of someone who usually uses completely different pairs of glasses to see or far away.

“These liquid crystals … we can rotate them with an electric field,” Mr. Eden.

“It is completely, independently tuable.” The position of those crystals affects the passage of light through the lens. An underlying eye-tractor glasses allows to respond to whatever improvement needs to the worker in a certain moment.

However, Tech-Lude Iewear There is a disturbed history -Take the sick “glass” smart glass of the sick.

Consumer acceptance is important, accepts Mr. Eden. Most people do not want to look like Sibborg: “We need to make our products really like the current iwear.”

The market is likely to grow for iVier Tech.

Presbyopia, an age -related situation that makes it difficult to focus on your close things, is estimated To be more common Over time as the world’s population. And myopia, or short -sightedness, Is also on growth,

Spectrums have been largely similar for decades. Bifocal lens- in which a lens is divided into two regions, usually to see either near or far away- to direct the wearer to direct their vision through the respective area, depend on what they want to see to see clearly to see what they want to see.

Verifocals do equal functions but the infection is very smooth.

In contrast, auto-focus lenses promise to adjust the part or all lenses, and even adjust the changing vision of the wearer over time.

“The first lens that we produced was terrible,” clearly consider Eden.

They were the early prototype “staining”, they say, and poor on its edges with the quality of the lens.

But the new version has proved to be promising in tests, says Mr. Eden. Participants have been asked in the company’s tests, for example, to read something on a page, then look at an object in distance, to see if the glasses react easily to infection.

Mr. Eden says that the eye tracking device within the glasses cannot determine what a wearer is looking at, although some activities such as reading activities such as reading are in principle as it is worth finding out because of the nature of eye movements associated with them.

Since such glasses wearer respond so closely to the behavior of the wearer, it is important that the frames fit well, the product director Emilia Helin says.

The frames of ixi are adjustable, but not for a great degree, looking at delicate electronics inside, she explains: “We have some flexibility but not complete flexibility.” This is why ixi expects to ensure that the small range of the frame designed by it will suit different types of faces.

The small battery secreted inside the autofocus frame of IXI should last for two days, Mr. Eden says that it is possible to recharge the glasses overnight at the time of sleeping.

But he will not be drawn on a launch date, which he intends to reveal at the end of this year. For the cost, I ask whether £ 1,000 can be the kind of price tag that is in his mind. He only says, “I am smiling when you say it but I will not confirm.”

Autofocus lenses can help those who struggle with Verifocals or Bifocals, Clinical Advisor of the College of Optometries, Paramdeep Bilkhu.

However, he says, “There is inadequate evidence to explain if they perform with traditional options and whether they can be used for safety important tasks such as driving.”

An optometry researcher at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chi-Ho has a similar concern-what would be wrong if the vision improvement went wrong or while doing surgery on someone, when it was, was there a little delay when it was?

“But I think there is something in terms of general use that allows autofocating, a good idea,” they say.

Mr. Eden noted that the first version of his company’s lens would not change the entire lens area. “A one can always look at the dynamic area,” they say. The security will become a “very serious business” if a fully self-proposed lens emerges.

In 2013, the UK firm Adalance released glasses, which allowed the wearers to manually replace the optical power of the lens through a small dial on the frame. These lenses had a fluid -filled membrane, which changed its curvature when compressed in response to dial adjustment.

Rob Stevens, the current chief executive of Adlens, says that the glasses sold for $ 1,250 (£ 920) in the US were “received well by consumers”, but not so much by the optiasis that he says “strangled sales”.

Since then, the technology has moved forward and the concept of the lens that automatically refocus itself, without manual intervention, has emerged.

Like IXI and other companies, Adlens is working on glasses that do so. However, Mr. Stevens declines to confirm a launch date.

Oxford University physicist Joshua Silver founded the Adalance, but no longer worked for the company.

He came in 1985 with the idea of ​​a fluid -filled adjustable lens and the developed glasses that could be tuned for the needs of the wear and then permanently set on that prescription.

Such lenses have enabled about 100,000 people in 20 countries to reach vision writing technology. Pro -Silver is currently demanding investment for an enterprise called Vision, which will roll these glasses more.

For more expensive, electronics-filled auto-focus glasses, he questions whether he will have a comprehensive appeal: “No will not be [people] Just go and buy reading glasses, which will do the same thing for them more or less? ,

Other glasses techniques have also slowed down the progression of eye conditions such as Myopia, beyond just correcting them.

For Glasses have developed lenses It has a honeycomb -like ring. Passing through the center of the ring, centered as normal, reaches the retina of the wearer and allows them to be seen clearly.

However, the light passing through the ring is given a slight meaning, meaning that peripheral retina A little blurred image gets,

This seems to slow down in improper eyeball growth in children, which the professor says that the rate of short -sighted progress is 60%cut. He said that with this technology, glasses are now in use in more than 30 countries.

The British firm Siteglass has a slightly different view – glasses that affect eye development and myopia progress to gently reduce the opposite of someone’s vision.

While autofocus glasses and other high-technical solutions may have a promise, the professor has a even bigger goal: the glasses that not just slow down myopia, but really reversed it slightly-a tantalizing possibility that can improve the vision of potential billions of people.

“There is a growing evidence of the fact that you can do it,” tease the Pro.