Smartglasses, like eyeglasses, need prescription

By Janet Cunningham, Director of Business Development at Luxexcel

As a smart glasses manufacturer, you may spend countless hours and dollars investing in and developing your Augmented Reality devices. You may source and decide on the best displays, colors, FOV, and how to achieve the best consumer experiences. The reality is that without personalized prescription lenses users won’t be able to fully appreciate your hard work.

Statistics indicate that more than 75% of the world’s adult population requires prescription lenses. Without the ability to see properly, consumers will not be able to use smart glasses. Addressing vision correction in Augmented Reality devices is, therefore, a prerequisite.

Until now, very few smart glasses manufacturers have found a solution to create smart glasses that function and look like traditional eyeglasses. Our customers are technology leaders and they seldom have experience in manufacturing prescription lenses. They’re experts at creating great technical devices.

We’ve developed a manufacturing platform, VisionPlatform™ 7, specifically for the smart eyewear industry that takes care of prescription in smart glasses. Read on to discover how VisionPlatform 7 addresses the complexity of prescription in your Augmented Reality device.

6 facts about prescription eyewear VisionPlatform 7 solves for smart glasses

1. Fashionable: Smart eyewear made with traditional lenses will be heavy and thick because all of the elements have to be made separately, thick enough to exist to their own and withstand stress, and then glued or pressed together. VisionPlatform 7 can print a much thinner lens onto an object like a waveguide or active foil and is able to encase the smart elements making the overall devices thinner, lightweight, and more user-friendly.
2. Quality: as a manufacturer, it’s important to remember that eyeglasses are medical devices. Lenses produced by VisionPlatform 7 are ophthalmic quality and comply with ISO, ANSI, and FDA standards.
3. Refractive errors: most users require vision correction to address refractive errors, which happen when the eye can’t focus on the images from the outside world. The most common are myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness), presbyopia (loss of near vision with age), and astigmatism. Lenses are customized during the manufacturing process to address each wearer’s specific refractive error and the position of the lens over the eye. For example, to correct astigmatism, a different power is required at a specified angle in the lens.
   For prescription lenses, a one-size-fits-all approach does not work as every lens needs to be made for a user’s individualized prescription, also taking into account how the eyewear fits the wearer. VisionPlatform 7 prints custom lens designs for users’ most common refractive errors, such as single vision lenses, multifocal progressive designs, free form lenses as well as prisms.
4. Glare: some manufacturers deliver prescription power by using adapters on their devices. However, when devices are placed to the back or front of a lens it creates additional shiny surfaces which bounce more light causing unnecessary glare. Glare makes it harder for people to see clearly. VisionPlatform 7 embeds smart devices inside of the 3D printed prescription lens so that it only has two surfaces, like a traditional eyeglass lens, thereby eliminating unnecessary glare.
5. Pupillary distance and OC: when you visit an eye care practitioner to purchase glasses, they’ll measure your pupillary distance and match it to the lenses they make for you. Your pupils must be aligned over the optical center of the lens, or you may feel nauseous. VisionPlatform 7 can 3D print lenses customized for each user’s prescription, including proper lens alignment.
6. Care: it may sound trivial, but you need to consider how users will clean your device. Most users know they’re not supposed to clean their eyewear lenses with their shirts or household paper towels, but they do. Imagine if your users damage the smart devices in the lens every time they simply clean their smart glasses.  Smart devices are tiny and sensitive. Fortunately, VisionPlatform 7 fully can protect smart devices because they are fully embedded inside of the prescription lens.

With VisionPlatform 7, Luxexcel offers a complete technology solution to manufacture prescription smart lenses so that you can focus on developing the technologies and content for your device.