OLED data glasses: Let your eyes do the walking

Juniper Foo | Jun 10, 2009

(Credit: Fraunhofer Institute in Dresden)

Coming from a bespectacled nation of Singaporeans with built-in myopia, I'd have to say it's a distracting sight to have data flit across the lenses even it does sound Minority Report cool. Just imagine if this little invention of some students from Fraunhofer Institute in Germany were to hit mainstream usage.

We'd have a global epidemic of distracted users plugged into their eyewear, busily accessing the day's news, emails, instant messages and miscellaneous data on their glasses, barely paying attention to where they're going. If you thought there are enough menaces on the road yakking away on Bluetooth headsets and texting on phones while driving, the OLED data eyeglasses just upped the ante.

Still, there's no halting technology. So looking on the bright side, this interactive eyewear does provide a far more natural alternative to head-mounted displays. The data glasses throw the image onto the retina via an OLED micro-display so it appears a meter in front of the wearer. And instead of getting a static image, an eye-tracking device fitted to the hinge lets you scroll through information by simply moving the eyeball, leaving you essentially handsfree.

Dr Michael Scholles from the Institute believes the eyeglasses already have a ready-made application in the medical and construction fields, and will open up new uses and, I'm pretty sure, new users like the severely disabled Stephen Hawkings.

Via Gizmag

Filed under: Future Tech
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