Our lives in the recent past have been taken over by a storm and we have technology to be thankful to. Be it our kitchens, bed rooms, homes, workplaces, or even our entertainment, everything is revolutionised. Our world has been changed and it is rightly appropriate that we change the way we see this new world. No, I am not talking about philosophy in this article. This article is about the smart reading glasses that will literally change the way we see our world. So, does adding the prefix-smart into anything makes it smart or it really does something. Let us find out.
Researchers at the Stanford University have come up with a unique reading glass that keeps track of your eye movement and auto focuses on anything your eyes are looking at. A paper published in the science journal Science Advances names these auto-focussing reading glasses as Autofocals.
Presbyopia is a condition of the eyes where as we get older, our ability to refocus at near distance diminishes due to increasing stiffness in our eyes. It usually affects people older than 45 years of age and affects over a billion people worldwide. This is the main reason for the older people to resort to wearing the reading glasses. But if you look at the structure of these reading glasses or popularly called progressive lens, they are not practical at all. For starters, you need to move your head around too much too focus at the place you actually want to look, keeping your head at awkward angles. In fact studies show that people wearing such reading glasses are more prone to injuries from falls as they are unable to perceive better. Thereby, these smart glasses could be the answer to your awkward head angle looks.
The autofocal lenses are filled with a fluid that expands and contracts keeping your eye movement in track. There are eye tracking sensors in the lenses that sense your eye movement and expand and contract the liquid, thereby giving you the right vision. The autofocals are assembly of already known technology to mankind, put together into software, to give the reading glass a new found way to read things the smarter way.
Though the lenses do sound, amazing, it could be awhile before it makes an appearance at your nearest optometrist. A study was conducted on 56 individuals and these autofocals were provided to them for use. They found it relatively much better than the ordinary reading glasses. However, no developments on size and design of the glasses have taken place and as such the designs are in its prototype designs and are quite bulky as well. So, while the team takes up some time to make the smart glasses from almost virtual reality headsets to more of a commercially viable design, we will have to wait some more time.
The best is the prescribed smart reading glass to correct the refractive error in the vision. So consult the doctor before you would choose the smart reading glass.
