Does looking through a screen, rather than at one, still count as screen time?
AR contact lenses promise the immersiveness of augmented reality without having to wear a bulky headset or use your smartphone. These thin, curved lenses display digital information on top of your real-world view — and they’re placed directly on the surface of your eye.
What Are Augmented Reality (AR) Contact Lenses?
Augmented reality contact lenses are wearable devices that overlay digital information onto a user’s real-world view while applied directly to the eye. Like regular contact lenses, they’re made out of hydrogels or silicone, but embedded with flexible microbatteries, tiny LED displays, microprocessors, sensors and wireless communication components.
Offering hands-free access to digital content in real-time, the idea is to project images, data or interactive elements directly onto a user's natural line of vision without obstructing it or disrupting social interaction. A user can control its interface with the flick of an eye or holding a prolonged glance thanks to built in eye-tracking technology.
Unlike bulky headsets and glasses that may have awkward and limited angles, smart contact lenses would provide a highly discreet and seamless AR experience with a natural field of view, including peripheral vision. Without the barriers posed by traditional AR devices, this innovation could revolutionize how users interact with digital information, impacting daily activities such as navigation and gaming while transforming workflows across a wide array of sectors, from medical and education to industrial and professional sports.
Do Augmented Reality Contact Lenses Exist?
Technically, yes. Prototypes of AR contact lenses exist, but none of them have made it out of the research lab.
The first prototype was developed by California-based startup Mojo Vision, which debuted the Mojo Lens in 2020. The project broke ground on smart lens technology, including preclinical testing and a live on-eye demonstration in 2022, but was indefinitely canceled the following year due to “significant challenges in raising capital.”
Other AR contact lens and smart lens projects have emerged in its wake, many of which are geared toward medical applications. And while each new prototype brings AR contact lenses closer to consumer availability, reaching the mass market will require developers to successfully miniaturize electronics with sufficient battery life and display quality, in addition to undergoing rigorous clinical trials for regulatory clearance that ensures the product is biocompatible and ready for everyday use.
Examples of AR Contact Lenses
As augmented reality and virtual reality software, headsets and smart glasses establish a $40 billion market, stakeholders are eager to take part in the expanding space. So far, tech giants Sony, Google and Samsung have all filed for smart contact lens patents. But it’s deep-tech startups that are leading the charge in AR-enabled and smart contact lens innovation. Consider the following projects that are establishing a proof of concept.
Mojo Vision’s Mojo Lens
Mojo Vision’s smart contacts, the Mojo Lens, was the first AR contact lens prototype. Now defunct, the device featured a 14,000 pixel-per-inch MicroLED display, eye-tracking and computer-vision image sensors and a micro-battery system. Measuring less than 0.5 millimeters in diameter, the smart contacts also included built-in, wireless radio communication antenna and a data-sorting ARM processor worn in a companion neck band device.
Innovega’s eMacula System
Innovega is a smart AR/VR eyewear company developing a dual system that pairs disposable, daily smart contact lenses with high-tech glasses for those with moderate to severe visual impairments. In tandem, the “lens within a lens” picks up the images and media from the sunglasses display and projects them directly onto the eye, allowing a user to simultaneously view digital content transposed over the natural world. Innovega has filed over 80 patents, and is entering Phase III FDA clinical trials for its eMacula smart eyewear system.
InWith Corporation’s Soft Smart Lenses
InWith Corporation has the first claim to creating AR-enabled contact lenses of the soft variety. These lenses feature electronic circuits built directly into the hydrogel that are designed to work with a smartphone. The idea is that anything you can access on your smartphone would be cast directly into a user’s line of vision, whether it be augmented or virtual reality. For those with a prescription to enhance sight, this feature would also be able to “tune” a user’s vision for a sharper image.
XPANCEO’s Smart Contact Lens Series
Dubai-based deep-tech company XPANCEO has developed a series of AR smart contact lenses, showcasing five different prototypes for various use cases. One uses its on-eye display to adjust lighting, contrast and enhance color perception for colorblind users. Another comes with optical verification tools that allows users to tackle digital tasks, such as making payments, transferring funds and gaining access to restricted areas, with intuitive gaze commands. Other features include night vision and zoom capabilities as well as app control.
Blink Energy’s BlinkIT Patch
Blink Energy developed BlinkIT, a device-agnostic patch that sits on the user’s eyelid and is designed to wirelessly power and connect AR contact lenses, smart lenses and other smart ocular devices, like eye implants. Although this technology is not an AR-enabled lens itself, it makes the list for addressing one of the major pain points companies and startups are facing in the space — providing sufficient battery life within such a small footprint. External accessories like BlinkIT that accompany a smart lens could be the quickest way to actualizing autonomous ocular devices.
Azalea Vision’s ALMA Lens
Healthtech startup Azalea Vision developed a smart contact lens that offers a non-surgical option for users suffering from keratoconus, corneal irregularities, presbyopia and light sensitivities. While it’s not specifically geared toward AR use, this device contains a microchip, micro battery, configurable light filter and radio frequency antennae and contributes to advances in on-eye electronic wearables.
Google’s Glucose-Monitoring Lens
In partnership with Novartis, Google set out to develop a smart contact lens in 2014 that could measure a user’s glucose levels through their tears. Using tiny sensors, the device wirelessly transmitted data to an external source via RFID as a prick-free way for people with diabetes to monitor their blood sugar levels, generating a reading once per second. But the project shutdown in 2018 due to technical hurdles.
Sensimed Triggerfish Contact Lens Sensor
Swiss-based company Sensimed have developed a silicone soft contact lens, the Sensimed Triggerfish, that’s designed to provide 24-hour glaucoma monitoring. Although the device doesn’t have anything to do with augmented reality, its embedded sensors can track fluctuations in a user’s intraocular pressure throughout the day, which may indicate a patient’s risk factor for the chronic eye disease. In 2016, it became the first smart contact lens to receive FDA approval.
Challenges Creating AR Contact Lenses
As an emerging technology, AR contact lenses face a number of setbacks.
Working on the Nanoscale
Embedding electronics into a contact lens requires working on an extremely small scale with ultra-miniaturized components. This means that researchers have to figure out a way to embed tiny, wireless sensors and microbatteries into a thin, flexible material without interfering with the user’s line of vision or blinking. Some aspects of creating a functioning AR contact lens rely on the entire nanotechnology field to advance and innovations that have yet to be discovered.
Biocompatibility
Any material used in an AR contact lens must be safe for prolonged exposure to the sensitive tissues of the eye. This means rethinking the typical build of electronic components. For example, making microLED displays and sensors without toxic metals and chemicals, batteries without lithium and processors without flame retardants. Figuring out a way to power these devices without overheating, losing connectivity, disturbing the eye’s natural moisture and pH levels, triggering an allergic reaction or imposing on the user’s line of sight prove to be significant challenges when working within the limited space of a contact lens.
Regulatory Approval
AR contact lenses are considered to be a medical device through the eyes of the FDA. Gaining regulatory clearance requires a product to pass a thorough, multi-step process — including preclinical research, animal testing and three clinical trial phases — that takes several years to complete, as its strict guidelines are designed to protect potential users. While no AR contact lenses have made it through the clinical trial stage, smart contact lenses with embedded electronics have achieved regulatory clearances: In 2016, Sensimed’s Triggerfish device became the first smart contact lens to receive FDA approval.
Marketability
AR contacts have an obvious appeal to those who are visually impaired and other specified medical use cases, for sports enhancement, entertainment and technical training across sectors; however, a major disadvantage smart contact lenses have in comparison to AR glasses and headsets is that users may not actually be comfortable applying an electronically enhanced lens directly onto their eye. As beneficial as a smart contact lens may be for warehouse employees taking inventory or in-field construction workers, for example, it’s unlikely that a company would be able to require its employees to wear AR contact lenses — limiting their viability to a certain degree.
Ethical Dilemmas
AR contact lenses pose several ethical dilemmas related to privacy, consent and information overload. If these devices are built with eye tracking technology, that means data is being collected in an extremely intimate way based on a user’s behaviors as they glance around. This information could be used by companies to build a profile in order to generate targeted advertisements based on a user’s interests and habits from information that wasn’t necessarily gathered in a consensual way. Plus, there’s something inherently dystopian about projecting ads directly onto a user’s cornea. The advent of AR smart contact lenses also raises concerns about the device being used as a covert surveillance tool — of both the user and those in their line of sight — as well as a hazardous distraction, negatively impacting a person’s ability to engage with the real world.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do AR contact lenses exist?
Yes; but only at the experimental level, as prototypes in research labs.
What is an AR contact lens?
An AR contact lens is an on-eye electronic device that overlays digital information onto a user’s line of vision.
Are AR contact lenses safe?
So far, no AR contact lenses have gained FDA approval, although a few have already been tested on humans. Smart contact lenses, which feature embedded electronics but lack augmented reality capabilities, have been approved by both the FDA and European regulatory bodies like the CE.
