Sup, Geordi? Electronic Corrective Eyewear to Hit the Market This Year

How have you been making use of your time? PixelOptics have spent the last decade developing emPower, which is – get this – electronic spectacles that can change focus via an electrical current run through a layer of liquid crystal in the lenses, effectively rendering the bifocal obsolete. You tell me what’s not bad ass about that. Just tell me. I dare you.

The specs have three modes: when off, they act as a regular progressive lens – not the greatest, but suitable for everyday activity. When in manual mode, the electronic layer is locked in the on position, and the glasses function more or less like traditional bifocals (effectively eliminating the need for the product, I guess…?). But where the true badassery lay is in automatic mode. While activated, the specs will dynamically shift focus via motion sensors, depending on the tilt of the wearer’s head. Y’know in sci fi movies, there’ll be, like, a cyborg antagonist, and he’ll have one robot eye, and he’ll enter an empty warehouse where the protagonist is hiding, and look around, and his robot eye’ll shift focus and go VZZZT, VZZZT all cool-like? Yeah, this is that. This is exactly that.

emPower’s battery lasts about three to five days, so your recharge schedule would essentially be the same as your phone’s. PixelOptics recommends you charge every night, and maybe with good reason – imagine your glasses ‘dying’ in the middle of a movie or something. Bizarre.

I’m interested in how this product will go over – the biggest market for multifocal lenses is undoubtedly the elderly, who are largely still technophobes. I guess we’ll soon see – emPower is breakdancing its way onto the scene by the end of this year.

For more information, feel free to watch this total nap of a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMeiRGl_rsw

[Via PhysORG]