Vision-correcting display nixes your need for eyeglasses
Vision-correcting display nixes your need for eyeglasses
Your reading glasses will be so yesterday with UC Berkeley's
new technology
By Sharon Gaudin
July 31, 2014 06:43 AM ET
Computerworld - What would it be like if you didn't need
your eyeglasses to clearly see your laptop screen or a text message on your
smartphone?
Scientists at the University of California Berkeley are
working on computer screens that would adjust their images to accommodate
individual user's visual needs. Think of it as a display that wears the glasses
so users don't have to.
"For people with just near sightedness or far
sightedness, life isn't so bad," said Fu-Chung Huang, the lead author of
the research paper on the display project at Berkeley. "But as you get
older, your lenses lose elasticity and you cannot read things close to you,
like a cell phone or tablet. You need another pair of reading glasses, which
can be quite inconvenient.
"With this technology, in the future, you just need
to press a button and the display will accommodate to your vision," he
said in an email to Computerworld.
Users would input their vision prescription into their
individual desktop, laptop or mobile device. Then when the user logs on with a
password, the computer recognizes the user and automatically adjusts its
display.
Researchers at Berkeley, working with scientists at MIT,
are developing algorithms that will compensate for a user's specific vision needs
to adjust the image on a screen so the user can see it clearly without needing
to wear corrective lenses. The software will create vision-correcting displays.
The researchers have been working on the technology for
three years.
A user who, for instance, needs reading glasses to see or
read anything clearly on his laptop or tablet screens wouldn't need to wear the
eyeglasses if the displays adjust themselves for his vision needs.
If a user who needs one pair of glasses to see things at
a distance and another pair for reading, would not need to put on reading
glasses to read her emails or Facebook posts if the display could adjust itself
for her near-vision needs.
The displays, according to Berkeley, also could be used
for people whose vision cannot be corrected with eyeglasses or contacts.
"This project started with the idea that Photoshop
can do some image deblurring to the photo, so why can't I correct the visual
blur on the display instead of installing a Photoshop in the brain?" asked
Huang, who now is a software engineer at Microsoft. "The early stage is
quite hard, as everyone said it is impossible. I found out that it is indeed
impossible on a "conventional 2D display." I need to modify the
optical components to make this happen."
The university said that the hardware setup adds a
printed pinhole screen sandwiched between two layers of clear plastic to an
iPod display to enhance image sharpness. The tiny pinholes are 75 micrometers
each and spaced 390 micrometers apart.
The algorithm, which was developed at Berkeley, it works
by altering the intensity of each direction of light that emanates from a
single pixel in an image based upon a user's specific visual impairment, the
university reported. The light then passes through the pinhole array in a way
that allows the user to see a sharp image.
Huang, who has not yet talked with computer monitor or
smartphone and tablet manufacturers about the research, noted that the display
technology could be developed into a thin screen protector.
"The current version is still quite fragile,"
he added. "It requires precise calibration between the eye and the display
and it took some time to find the sweet spot for my own eye. But remember that
Amazon just announced the Fire Phone with the super fancy dynamic perspective
to track your eye. This technology can solve my problem ... so I'm pretty
optimistic about the overall progress."
However, he said that at this point in their work, the
technology wouldn't work on a shared display such as a television screen.
"In the future, we also hope to extend this
application to multi-way correction on a shared display, so users with
different visual problems can view the same screen and see a sharp image,"
he said.
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