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Tag: Contact Lenses

  • Google Was Just Granted A Patent For Manufacturing Contact Lenses

    Google Was Just Granted A Patent For Manufacturing Contact Lenses

    On Tuesday, Google was granted a patent related to the manufacturing of contact lenses. This comes at a time when the company’s approach to Glass is in something of a transition.

    Google pulled the plug on the first phase of Google Glass earlier this year, but has maintained that the project is not dead. They’ve just kind of taken it back to the drawing board. Reports have been circulating this week about executive chairman Eric Schmidt saying that Glass is a “big and very fundamental platform for Google.”

    “We ended the Explorer program and the press conflated this into us canceling the whole project, which isn’t true,” he was quoted as saying. “Google is about taking risks and there’s nothing about adjusting Glass that suggests we’re ending it.”

    Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, Google does already make smart contact lenses that are not part of the Glass program. Early last year, the company made the announcement. Google’s current contact lenses are related to health – specifically keeping glucose levels under control for diabetics.

    Last summer, Google partnered with Novartis to develop the lenses and better compete in the blood-sugar tracking market as well as treat presbyopia, a condition in which eye focus diminishes with age. As part of the deal, Novartis’ Alcon eyecare unit would reportedly continue to develop and commercialize Google’s contact lens technologies.

    The project was co-developed by Babak Parviz, one of the original Google Glass engineers, who has since moved on to Amazon. If you’re still wondering about the connection between the contact lenses and Google Glass, beyond the fact that they’re both wearables focused on your eyeballs and that health-related functionality is where wearables ultimately shine, Parviz has actually given presentations about smart contact lenses that would lead you to imagine more of a crossover.

    Here’s one from Google’s “Solve for X” event in 2012, in which he mentions gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, interfacing with mobile, super vision, night vision, and multi-focus as possibilities connected with the emerging technology.

    The point is that smart contact lenses may do a lot more interesting things down the road, and Google has been researching this stuff for quite some time. Now it has a new patent related to making them. Here’s the abstract:

    Contact lenses and methods of manufacturing contact lenses are provided. In one aspect, a method includes: forming a substrate having an uneven surface; providing a sensor at a first region of the substrate; providing a chip at a second region of the substrate; and encapsulating the substrate, sensor and chip in a polymer. The method also includes: patterning interconnections from the first region of the substrate to the second region of the substrate; and patterning metal pads proximate to the second region of the substrate. The chip can be provided on a metal pad. The uneven surface can be a sloped surface or one or more sloped channels in the substrate, and the channels can be wide enough to receive interconnections for the chip and to receive the chip. Further, the substrate can be ring-shaped and curved prior to encapsulation.

    The company applied for the patent in September of 2012, and it was just granted.

    I’m no expert on any of this stuff, so I won’t attempt to walk you through it. You can peruse it at your leisure here.

    One of the biggest obstacles Google Glass has faced has been the awkward look. Most people don’t want to wear these things on their faces. While they would still have a hard time convincing some people to wear contacts, such as device with similar technologies would at least get Google’s platform over the fashion hurdle – something Schmidt himself has brought up in the past.

    “I’m not sure you really want to walk through town with these odd glasses on, you know, looking like an airforce jetfighter or something,” Schmidt said five years ago.

    That mostly still applies today.

    The patent is only the latest in a series of related patents granted to the company. Take a look at some others here.

    Images via Google, USPTO

  • Google Deals With Novartis To Further Develop Its Smart Contact Lenses

    Earlier this year, Google announced its smart contact lenses aimed at helping diabetics keep glucose levels under control. The company has now reportedly found a partner to to make them.

    Reuters is reporting that Google has struck a deal with Novartis to develop the contact lenses and better compete in the blood-sugar tracking market. But they’re not stopping there. According to the report, Novartis will also aim to treat presbyopia, a condition in which eye focus diminishes with age.

    Also as part of the deal, the report says, Novartis’ Alcon eyecare unit will continue to develop and commercialize Google’s contact lens technologies.

    The project’s co-founders Brian Otis and Babak Parviz had this to say about the project back in January:

    Over the years, many scientists have investigated various body fluids—such as tears—in the hopes of finding an easier way for people to track their glucose levels. But as you can imagine, tears are hard to collect and study. At Google[x], we wondered if miniaturized electronics—think: chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair—might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy.

    We’re now testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. We’re testing prototypes that can generate a reading once per second. We’re also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we’re exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds. It’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies which are helping to refine our prototype. We hope this could someday lead to a new way for people with diabetes to manage their disease.

    Parviz’s vision for what smart contact lenses can do stretches far beyond the applications mentioned above. He gave a talk a couple years ago about what the technology might one day be able to accomplish, and we’re talking some pretty cool, futuristic stuff. Ideas mentioned include: gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, interfacing with mobile, supervision, night vision, and multi-focus.

    Keep in mind, Parviz is the main guy behind Google Glass. He also just happened to jump ships to Amazon.

    Terms of Google’s deal with Novartis were not disclosed.

    Image via Google

  • Contact Lenses Are Getting Smarter Thanks To Google

    Contact lenses have been helping people see without the aid of glasses since 1888. In that time, the contact lens hasn’t changed all that much. The century old tech is in for a big overhaul in the coming years, however, thanks to Google.

    Mashable is reporting that Google has been granted two patents for its “smart contact lenses.” The contact lenses will be outfitted with a variety of sensors and circuits that would allow the wearer to monitor a variety of information. It’s able to do this through sensors that monitor the material that make up our tears.

    From the patent:

    Human tear fluid contains a variety of inorganic electrolytes (e.g., Ca.sup.2+, Mg.sup.2+, Cl.sup.-), organic solutes (e.g., glucose, lactate, etc.), proteins, and lipids. A contact lens with one or more sensors that can measure one or more of these components provides a convenient non-invasive platform to diagnose or monitor health related problems. An example is a glucose sensing contact lens that can potentially be used for diabetic patients to monitor and control their blood glucose level.

    That sounds cool and all, but how would this actually work? Sensors and circuits need power to work and people aren’t exactly looking forward to shoving batteries into their eyes. That’s where the technical wizardry at Google comes in:

    The ophthalmic sensing platform can be powered via radiated energy harvested at the sensing platform. Power can be provided by light energizing photovoltaic cells included on the sensing platform. Additionally or alternatively, power can be provided by radio frequency energy harvested from the antenna. A rectifier and/or regulator can be incorporated with the control electronics to generate a stable DC voltage to power the sensing platform from the harvested energy.

    In other words, the contact lenses can be powered through naturally occurring radiation. In its absence, the lens would then be powered by energy transmitted to small antennae embedded in the lens itself. Either way, it’s probably harmless.

    While not exactly descriptive, Google did share an image of what the contact lens might look like. You will notice that it has two rings of sensors that loop around the entire lenses. One would assume that these circuits would blend in with a person’s eye, but we can also hope that the lens will make the person look like they just came out of Tron:

    Contact Lenses Are Getting Smarter Thanks To Google

    Perhaps the most amazing part about all of this is that Google is already looking into ways to mount cameras onto these contact lenses. While the primary goal for now is to help monitor health conditions, it’s not too far out of the realm of possibility to assume that we may see some Google Glass-like tech show up in the company’s contact lenses. That’s still a ways off, however, as Google still hasn’t even received FDA approval to start using the device on humans.

    If you want to know more about Google’s contact lenses, check out this Solve for X talk from 2012 in which Babak Parviz talks about developing microsystems for the eye:

    Image via United States Patent and Trademark Office

  • Google Contact Lenses Are Now Official

    We reported two years ago that Google contact lenses were likely on the way, after Glass was unveiled, and finding that one of the engineers had previously given a talk discussing such devices.

    Now, Google has actually announced smart contact lenses. It’s not what you think though. It’s not the contact lens version of Google Glass. At least not yet.

    Google’s contact lenses have to do with health – specifically keeping glucose levels under control for diabetics.

    “Over the years, many scientists have investigated various body fluids—such as tears—in the hopes of finding an easier way for people to track their glucose levels,” write Brian Otis and Babak Parviz, the project’s co-founders (Parviz being the engineer mentioned above). “But as you can imagine, tears are hard to collect and study. At Google[x], we wondered if miniaturized electronics—think: chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair—might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy.”

    “We’re now testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material,” the two explain. “We’re testing prototypes that can generate a reading once per second. We’re also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we’re exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds. It’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies which are helping to refine our prototype. We hope this could someday lead to a new way for people with diabetes to manage their disease.”

    Google did not even bring up Google Glass in the announcement, but that’s not to say the technologies couldn’t merge in the future. Who’s to say they’re not already working on it? First of all, watch Parviz’s presentation. He’s clearly thinking bigger with contact lenses, and he outlines some pretty incredible possibilities, which could make these things (and Glass, for that matter) a great deal more useful. My favorite example is the “super vision” idea.

    Other concepts he discusses include: gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, interfacing with mobile, night vision, and multi-focal electronic contact lenses.

    There’s a lot of potential with this technology, and now that Google actually has something to show off, even if it’s still testing, it suggests that this kind of stuff may be closer than we thought. If you thought Glass turned people into cyborgs, wait for this stuff. Of course Google is buying up robotics companies left and right too, not to mention Nest, makers of smart home devices like thermostats and smoke alarms. Imagine if these things interfaced with Google contact lenses. Who knows what Google will let you do in the future? Wink to adjust your heat? Be alerted within your actual field of vision when there’s a fire in your home?

    But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Right now, Google’s contacts have a specific purpose, and it will have to prove their legitimacy there first. The company is currently in discussions with the FDA, and admits that there’s still a lot more work to be done “to turn this technology into a system that people can use.”

    Google says it intends to look for partners to develop apps that would make measurements available to the wearer and to doctors. Perhaps they shut down Google Health too early.

    Image via Google

  • Google Glass-Like Contact Lenses Are Getting Closer

    One of the Google Glass engineers gave a talk at the Google-hosted Solve For X event earlier this year, before Google even revealed Project Glass. He talked about building microsystems on the eye. For some reason, even after the unveiling of Project Glass, this didn’t get a whole lot of attention.

    Basically, he talked about putting devices in contact lenses. Envision Google Glass without the glass (surely a much more fashionable choice). I highly recommend watching his presentation if you want a glimpse of the future.

    But we already covered this. Why do I bring this up now? Well, that’s because there are new reports about scientists in Belgium that have built an LCD screen into a contact lens called The Ghent. It comes from researchers at Imec and UGent. Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson writes:

    All the Ghent lense does is flash a dollar sign – a joke about what happens to the eyes of cartoon characters when they think of a money-making scheme.

    Ghent researchers imagine that in the near future, lenses like they one they’ve built will be able to change the color of the wearer’s eye, work as sunglasses, or serve a medical purpose like protecting a damaged iris from bright light.

    “Normally, flexible displays using liquid crystal cells are not designed to be formed into a new shape, especially not a spherical one. Thus, the main challenge was to create a very thin, spherically curved substrate with active layers that could withstand the extreme molding processes,” said Jelle De Smet, the main researcher on the project. “Moreover, since we had to use very thin polymer films, their influence on the smoothness of the display had to be studied in detail. By using new kinds of conductive polymers and integrating them into a smooth spherical cell, we were able to fabricate a new LCD-based contact lens display.”

    So, this technology is getting closer. Google Glass is expected to see availability next year. How long until Google gets the contact lens form to consumers?