What are electronic glasses for visually impaired people? Why are they good? You will find answers to these and other questions in the article. Wearing glasses is a traditional way of correcting vision. However, today they have changed significantly due to the development of technology.
So, adjustable diopter glasses are the latest development. That is, now a person can instantly adjust the optical power of the lens. These devices are called adaptive glasses, and they are a universal tool for correcting the visual acuity of any person. Consider some versions of electronic glasses.
Problem Solving
Few today know about the existence of electronic glasses. People with poor eyesight often face various problems. One of them is when a person's eyes see differently. To correct this defect, you have to order glasses with different diopters, but this is much more expensive and not always possible.
Another problem is the discomfort associated with the visibility of objects at a given distance. ToFor example, myopia-treatment glasses can clearly see objects placed far away, but they are too powerful for reading. With farsightedness, everything happens the other way around.
And finally, the last situation is the deterioration of vision, requiring the replacement of lenses with stronger ones. All of the above problems can be solved by multifunctional glasses with adjustable focus, the system of which is a very simple mechanism. It is based on the principle of binoculars.
Features
What are the characteristics of adaptive glasses? The most important feature is the presence of a pair of curved lenses in contact with each other. Attached to each edge is a small wheel for adjusting the optical power, which allows you to adjust the image for the eyes individually.
If you turn the wheel, the lenses will move. This action will change the diopter from -6 to +3. As a result, adaptive glasses can be used by people with both farsightedness and nearsightedness. There are other versions of adaptive glasses, in which the focus is transformed using an electrical impulse. These are amazing emPower goggles.
Appearance
The world's first electronic glasses promise to put an end to traditional optical lenses. They will not need to be supplemented with others or changed, as these devices automatically adapt to your vision.
On the new emPower glasses, the lenses are coated with a very thin scrap of liquid crystals, which automatically adjusts clarity depending on the tasks. This model looks like simple glasses, but in reality it is a completely revolutionary device. So, people with poor eyesight will no longer need to change their reading glasses to simple glasses - just adjust the emPower, which is equipped with the world's first electronic focus lenses.
Settings
Is it difficult to adjust glasses with liquid crystal lenses? No, it's not difficult. Here the debugging is very simple. Reading mode can be activated in two ways:
- Put your head down.
- Tap your fingers on the temples.
It is known that PixelOptics manufactures emPower glasses. Its management claims that in the future they will produce glasses for people with different vision. Versions of a wide variety of styles, shapes, colors and parameters will appear on the market, each person will choose something for himself.
Management
Electronic glasses are battery operated. It will take approximately 8 hours to fully charge it. After the battery will function for about three days. You can charge it while relaxing.
The control mode can be selected in the arms of the glasses: manual or automatic.
Nuances
It is known that the world's first electronic glasses emPower were offered by the American company PixelOptics in 2011. With these progressive lenses, the optical area for near vision has a certain constant amount of addition, to which, if necessary, you can add +0.75 D.
Addition instantly increases automatically or when you tilt your head (we wrote about this above),or you can manually turn on the electronic area (by touching the side of the temple).
To increase the size of the addition, an invisible layer of liquid crystals is used, which is placed in the lens. When a weak electric current flows through this layer, its refractive index increases.
With the help of +0.75 D electronic addition, it is possible to significantly reduce the addition parameters of the most advanced lens (the difference between the optical power of the near vision area and the distance vision area) required by a person. And the lower the addition, the less peripheral distortion the avant-garde lens has, and the greater the field of clear vision at all distances. That is why a person will feel much more comfortable in emPower than in simple advanced glasses.
By the way, further modernization of emPower lenses will most likely lead to the fact that a person with the help of an electronic additive will be able to receive the required addition in full (maximum value 3.5 D). Also, the area of the LCD area will be expanded to the entire lens.
emPower lenses are made from a polymer with a refractive index of 1.67. This means that they will be light and thin even at high diopters.
Implementation
emPower glasses are already successfully sold in the USA. In Europe, they are distributed and manufactured by Novacel. emPower lenses come with a charger and classic-style frames. The only thing that does not allow you to fully enjoy is the price of wonderful devices. After all, emPower glasses cost between $1,000 and $1,200.
By the way, PixelOptics has been building the emPower version for over 12 years. During this period, it has filed 275 US patents related to this technology.
Smart Glasses
Oxford University has developed glasses that can help visually impaired patients navigate and avoid obstacles on their own.
The lead developer of these miracle devices is Dr. Stephen Hicks. A video camera and a tiny computer processing unit are mounted on the frame of the glasses. There is software here that allows you to get a picture of objects and apply it to the eyepieces. Instead of lenses, electronic transparent displays are installed that display images of objects and people around the user. As a result, a person can distinguish chairs from tables, curbs from shadows, and people from each other.
Developers say that their smart glasses do not replace lost vision, and therefore are not suitable for blind people. Instead, technology increases the level of one's own spatial erudition. In fact, displays give more complete information about what a person sees anyway, but this data allows the user to achieve greater confidence in what is happening around him.
These glasses also work great at dusk and can help those who suffer from night blindness. Today they are still somewhat massive. A little later, manufacturers plan to lighten and reduce the body and set the market price at the level of a simple smartphone.
