New high-tech smart glasses track eyes to automatically focus on what wearer sees

Taking technology to the next level, scientists have combined eye-tracking technology with depth-sensing in order to create new kind of high-tech smart glasses that will automatically focus itself on what the person sees.

A team from Stanford University has developed a pair of high-tech spectacles known as ‘autofocals’ that incorporates fluid-filled lenses, depth-sensing cameras and eye-tracking technology to ensure that the object the wearer is seeing remains sharp and in focus.

The glasses are essentially made for people suffering from presbyopia – common form of age-induced farsightedness, where lenses in the eyes start to become stiff, hence causing trouble to focus on close-up objects –, and to solve issues related to progressive lenses, explained New Atlas.

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The fluid filled in the lenses of these new prototype specs reacts to an electric current and becomes thicker and thinner to change the depth of the focus as required. Along with those lenses, there is also an eye-tracking system that looks where the wearer is looking. Then, the depth-sensing camera measure how far away the object is and automatically adjusts the focus accordingly.

“More than a billion people have presbyopia and we’ve created a pair of autofocal lenses that might one day correct their vision far more effectively than traditional glasses,” said Gordon Wetzstein, co-author of the study published in Science Advances.

The specs were tested on 56 people suffering from presbyopia. The volunteers concluded that the new smart glasses made it easier and quicker to read and perform other tasks as compared to the normal progressive lenses.

The autofocals are currently very bulky, thus the team now intends to make the technology lighter, more stylish, and more energy efficient in order to become more like an everyday item. Though it might take a few years to develop, Wetzstein is sure that autofocals are the future of vision correction, as per Stanford University.

“This technology could affect billions of people’s lives in a meaningful way that most techno-gadgets never will,” he said.