Dual-focus eyewear to make augmented reality battlefield-ready

Posted April 20, 2012 by Johnny2x in Science

Innovega’s dual-focus eyewear to make augmented reality battlefield-ready

The iOptik display system, consisting of modified contact lenses and glasses, promises to revolutionize head-mounted display-based augmented reality by allowing the wearer to focus on two planes at the same time. Innovega, the company behind the project, developed their ultra-small form-factor head-up display (HUD) setup in frames of DARPA’s Soldier Centric Imaging via Computational Cameras (SCENICC) program, and has now signed a contract with the agency to deliver a prototype.

Head-up displays are transparent displays that allow for the superposition of the presented imagery over what is being observed in the real world, and are therefore great for augmented reality purposes. DARPA has been exploring HUDs for a long time (they were originally designed for jet fighter pilots to allow them to see all the critical information while keeping their heads up, without looking down at the console), so the agency is definitely no stranger to the idea, but the existing solutions were just too bulky to be of any use on the battlefield.

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