I’ve been a sufferer of nearsightedness for most of my life and am now getting to that age where whenever I have to read something on a smartphone I pull that old man move of holding it not too close and not too far and then fine-tune the distance by shifting my head back a bit so I can see it properly, grimacing the whole time. I’m far from alone in this problem though, as everyone is said to develop some degree of presbyopia – farsightedness due to old age – as they get up in years. And studies are showing that along with our increasingly smartphone-integrated lives, cases of poor eyesight are steadily rising around the world.
Luckily, technology is not only the cause but the solution to all of life’s problems, and to that end we have Elcyo, a startup out of Osaka University that is now based in Kyoto. Their goal is to create a pair of glasses that can automatically focus based on whatever you’re looking at. Current eyewear solutions include bifocals but those result in a narrower range of view that can put elderly wearers in danger of bumping into things in their blind spots and falling.
Another solution is to have several pairs of glasses, but that’s just a pain. The autofocus glasses, however, will scan the wearer’s eyes to determine what is being looked at and will then adjust its lenses to correct the wearer’s focus on it. The lenses use liquid crystal which can be adjusted electrically and Elcyo’s particular design is thin and light enough to be wo.