A person can change the prescription of their eyewear with a quick swipe with the 32°N sunglasses by technology company DeepOptics.
The adaptive focus sunglasses use a technology that DeepOptics calls pixelated liquid crystal (LC) lenses.
These lenses contain thousands of pixels, which in this case refers to tiny electronic controls that change the optical properties of the glasses.
The new technology can have many applications, but with its first product, the Israeli company is targetting people with presbyopia ? a condition that affects everyone as they age, making it progressively harder to focus on objects up close.
The 32°N sunglasses have adaptive focus lenses
Whereas usually affected people would face switching between two pairs of glasses while outside ? one pair of sunglasses and one pair of reading glasses ? with 32°N, they only need to swipe the arm of the frame near their temple to trigger a change in the lens. "With dynamic lenses, the lenses can dynamically change their prescription ? their optical power ? to correct for different distances," DeepOptics CEO and co-founder Yariv Haddad told Dezeen.
He explained that while there are other technologies out there for dynamic focusing optics, almost none of them are suitable for eyeglasses because they rely on moving parts.
"Liquid Crystal is a material that can change its optical characteristics electronically, without moving or changing its shape, and is therefore critical for enabling this new ...