How Mojo Vision Is Building Augmented Reality (AR) Into Contact Lenses

As the world’s first-ever augmented reality smart contact lens, Mojo Lens is set to become a bonafide game-changer. This article will cover everything you need to know about Mojo Vision’s innovative AR invention.

Introduction 👀

Have you heard of augmented reality (AR)? You probably have, but you might not know of some of the incredible products that it is being used for.

AR is a technology that blends digital content with the real world. For businesses, this could mean a whole new way to engage with customers. Mojo Vision is one company that uses AR to drive innovation and change how we visualise and see the world.

Building the world’s first augmented reality contact lens is no small feat, but Mojo Vision is turning doubters into believers, and soon this fantasy will be a distinct possibility.

In this article, we’ll delve deep into Mojo Vision’s great invention and show why it is one of the most awaited pieces of technology to date.

Mojo Lens: AR Contact Lenses Made Possible 🕶️

As Mojo Vision rightly says, “A vision to the future,” and ironically, to call their innovation futuristic would be an understatement.  Mojo Lens, the AR-powered contact lens that has captivated the world with its unlimited potential, is arguably the most promising augmented smart contact lens produced today. Yes, you heard that right, not smart glasses, smart lenses!

Picture Courtesy of Mojo Vision

Mojo Lens’ revolutionary design uses a tiny microLED capable of displaying even the smallest particles to share critical information. Solid-state batteries power the lenses with smart sensors built into the display lens that also corrects your vision. So, you’re essentially getting a pair of prescription lenses with innovative AR technology.

One of the most significant drawbacks of AR projections is that they can be slightly visually disruptive. However, Mojo Lens utilises augmented reality (AR) in such a way that they can create immersive experiences to overlay digital information in the real world without cluttering reality. 

Another great benefit of Mojo Lens is its versatility and the range of activities it can support. The lens will feed crucial data while you’re engaged in events that demand your attention. So, whether it’s the trails on a ski slope, your pace for your last mile of a run, or talking points for a presentation, you’ll have access to important information literally in front of you, without holding a device or looking down at a screen. 

Picture Courtesy of Mojo Vision

You might be asking, but how does the lens do this exactly? First, Mojo Vision uses built-in microelectronics within their dynamic microLED display to seamlessly display digital images and information in your real-world surroundings. 

Secondly, the lens is built with intuitive software that understands the activities you’re engaged in, so it can provide critical information accordingly without causing any distractions. The AR projected information is meant to support your endeavour rather than pose as a disruption, and the lens is designed to achieve this perfectly.

How Do Mojo Vision’s AR Contact Lenses Work? 🤔

Looking at the completed prototype of the Mojo Lens now, the buzz around the product is tremendous and rightly so. But the product development journey has been a rough one for Mojo Vision. They have had to make several design engineering decisions to create an innovative and futuristic AR contact lens that could work as the product is intended to. 

While AR smart contact lenses are not a rare sight in most sci-fi movies, recreating the same thing for the real world is a tall order. Think about it; we are talking about a smart computer the size of almost a nickel. Not only that, but the product has to serve its purpose as a standard prescription lens and be safe to wear despite containing micro-electrically engineered structures. 

Essentially, this means the contact lens needs to be safe and comfortable to wear, shouldn’t heat up, and do everything, if not more than a pair of smart glasses would do. Of course, creating a product like this is no accident, and from this point onwards, we’ll explain everything that Mojo Vision did to come up with the fully-functioning prototype of Mojo Lens.

Mojo Vision made plenty of innovative choices in their optics, wireless communications, sensors, and materials whilst keeping the system compact, low power, and most importantly, safe to wear.

Mojo Vision embedded all of its smart components into a time-tested contact lens infrastructure called the “Scleral Lens.” The scleral lens is a fascinating invention of optical science, where the lens sits on the white part of your eye, a.k.a, the Sclera, but doesn’t touch your cornea. 

Therefore, it won’t obstruct your vision or cause any discomfort. Mojo Lens was able to tick a giant box with comfort by using the scleral lens.

Picture Courtesy of Mojo Vision

Mojo Vision has built the lens to be custom fitted to the user’s eyes so that it’s exceptionally comfortable to wear and doesn’t rotate or slip on the look, thereby checking off another potential hazard.

Mojo Vision has also patented a method that maximises the oxygen delivered to the user’s eye, which is another critical element of contact lens comfort and eye health.

Now that we’ve covered the safety and comfortability aspect of the Mojo Lens let’s go over the specific hardware and technology used in this smart innovation. 

Thin film bio-safe batteries power the Mojo Lens AR system with motion sensors enabling the world’s most accurate eye tracking. They’ve also developed an extremely low-power image sensor for computer vision and event detection. However, all of that pales in comparison to the world’s smallest and densest dynamic display, which is clearly the star of the Mojo Lens.

The pixel-to-pixel spacing in their display is only 1.8 microns giving it a density of 14,000 pixels per 2.5 centimetres. With this, Mojo Lens can display crisp text photos and video in a device less than half a millimetre in diameter, smaller than a ladybug!

They’ve also included an elegantly complex multi-surface micro-optic made out of a single piece of plastic on top of the dynamic display. The role of this micro-optic is to focus light from the display directly onto the retina improving clarity and vision. 

Picture Courtesy of Mojo Vision

You might be thinking, won’t this display system block and obstruct our natural vision, and the answer is, of course not! It turns out that the display is so tiny and close to your eye that your eye essentially looks around the display and completely bypasses it.

Mojo Lens is designed to be worn on both eyes, giving users a three-dimensional visual experience. In addition, each lens can integrate into a Mojo-designed accessory where the computing and the network interfaces are installed. For example, the Mojo accessory could wirelessly connect to your smartphone or the cloud.

The accessory module is also where the software applications reside, and It’s worn near the Mojo Lens. In their first-generation product, the accessory will be built into a helmet, a hat, safety glasses, or even a necklace.

One exciting function that the accessory also serves is to capture the eye motion data from the contact lenses, compute the updated digital view based on the user’s new eye position and then send that view back to the lenses, all in under ten milliseconds. This ensures that the AR content stays still in the real world even as you move your eyes.

The next question is, how do you control Mojo Lens? The simple answer is with your eyes. 

As it turns out, your eyes are a highly accurate pointing device. With Mojo’s built-in eye tracking in each lens, they’ve potentially unlocked the ultimate hands-free user interface. This eye-control user experience, where your eyes will act as a cursor, much like a controller or a mouse, is sure to change how we interact with digital technologies and could pave the way for other technologies to adopt this interface.

Let’s face it, with just a glance, you’ll be able to select tools and access content effortlessly; how convenient and user-friendly would that be? 

If you’d like to learn more about how the Mojo Lens system works and precisely what hardware is packed inside this smart contact lens, check out this prototype testing that popular YouTuber Adam Savage went through in collaboration with Mojo Vision.

Video Courtesy: Adam Savage’s Tested and Mojo Vision

Why Are Mojo Lenses The Future? 🔮

A few months back, Mojo Lens became “features complete”, i.e. the company had finally managed to develop all the necessary hardware features inside the product to make it functional as per the design concept. 

The features included in the completed prototype include:

A microdisplay to let the user see the augmented projections. As we’ve already mentioned, It is an impressive 14,000 pixel-per-inch MicroLED display. Measuring less than 0.5mm in diameter with a pixel-pitch of 1.8 microns, it is the world’s smallest and densest display created for dynamic AR content.

Picture Courtesy of Mojo Vision

A visual sensor for assessing and processing the surroundings through computer vision and eye-tracking sensors (such as accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer).

A medical-grade power system with solid-state batteries, a 5Ghz radio communication antenna to make the lens communicate with an external unit, and an ARM Core M0 processor that acts as a “traffic cop” for the data.

The lens doesn’t contain the processing unit inside, but it communicates via radio waves with the external accessory module for computation purposes. 

In the current state, the hardware for the lens mandates a necklace-like processor that wirelessly transfers information to the lens and back to a computational system that tracks the eye movement data for research. The current prototype also requires a unique cap to be worn with an antenna built-in to ensure a smooth connection for early testing.

While being forced to use any mandatory accessories seems like a drawback, Mojo Vision will likely optimise the size and necessity of these accessories to make the entire setup a lot less burdensome.

It is pretty impressive how Mojo Vision has put all these components inside a single contact lens; to do this; they had to manufacture many custom components. And the fact that the prototype is fully-functional is awe-inspiring in its own right. 

But importantly, this makes Mojo Lens the world’s first ever fully-functioning smart augmented reality contact lens. So history beckons, or does it?

When Is The Mojo Lens Coming Out? ⌛

Before you hop onto Amazon to get your pair of Mojo Lenses,  we’ve got some news for you; it’s not out yet. And unfortunately, we don’t have a fixed release date either. 

As for when the product could be feasibly available, the company said early this year that the product would not be out in a year but certainly sooner than five years. So we’ve waited this long; what’s five more years, eh? 

So, what’s the road map for getting this product to market? Mojo Vision’s most significant hurdle to launching this product would be to make it safe to wear on the eyes. FDA approval will be necessary before they can sell it to anyone. They’ll have to ramp up clinical trials now that everything is functional from a tech, feature and software standpoint. 

On June 28, 2022, the CEO of Mojo Vision tried out the lenses in his eyes and used them for almost an hour. This is fantastic news for everyone eagerly waiting for this product to finally land on the market, as the sooner they complete the in-eye testing phase, the faster it can be launched. But, of course, there are plenty of safety concerns that need to be thoroughly dealt with, especially as it’s an electronic device in a sensitive area like the eyes.

When asked how the lens felt, Drew Perking, CEO of Mojo Vision, said that physically the lens felt like any other contact lens, and it didn’t get warm or anything like that. This could be down to the conservative energy-saving technology built into the lens. However, he mentioned that he could still perceive something in his eyes and reiterated that the company would explore ways to reduce this sensation.

While in-eye testing is just the first step in this long and arduous process, Mojo Vision will also continue to conduct user tests to assess the product’s functionality and fit in varying environmental circumstances, i.e. wind, different lighting levels, humidity, dust, etc.

Furthermore, the product will also be further optimised to improve the lenses’ comfort and power consumption components.

Conclusion 🌟

If you’d asked us 20 years ago that a fully-functional prototype of a product like this would be ready by 2022, we would have laughed it off. But Mojo Vision is living proof that anything is possible through perseverance and creative application of innovative technology. When there is a will, there’s always a way!

As things stand, things are looking positive for Mojo Vision. The concept works and has begun in-eye testing with positive results. Of course, improvements and optimisations are required, but sooner rather than later, we will see Mojo Vision introduce the first AR-powered contact lenses to the world.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about intuitive technologies like AR, book a discovery chat or visit our learning centre to read other informational pieces like this. Either way, we’d be happy to discuss unique ways to take your business forward through innovative digital pathways.

Please note: Any images and registered trademarks are the copyright and ownership of Mojo Vision. They are used in this article entirely for the purpose of education and review of the technology being utilised by the company in its products.