Zeiss Shows Smart Optics Technology at CES 2016
Optics for hands-free displays are advancing rapidly. Very few companies have been working on and delivering game-changing optics longer than Carl Zeiss. The company makes lenses for everything from microscopes to telescopes.
At CES, Carl Zeiss Smart Optics GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of the German giant, was showing the results of the latest developments for smart glasses. Smart Optics combines a Fresnel structure on a polycarbonate lens and a pico projector in the arm of the glasses to produce a very light weight prototype of future smart glasses.
The technology demonstration and prototype shown at CES has been described in many technology sites. An interview with Dr. Kai Jens Ströder, the company’s spokesperson, on the Wired blog shed light on the company’s strategy while a post on the AnandTech blog got into much greater detail. For example, the post says that the technology supports “an arbitrary focus to either place the displayed image a short distance away from the eye (~2m), or even at infinity to create a true HUD.”
Those who tried the technology felt that the weight and size are nearly indistinguishable from corrective glasses but other characteristics such as brightness and resolution are not ready for prime time. While the company touted the technology as easy to mass produce, Joshua Ho, AnandTech’s Senior Editor for Smartphones & Tablets reports that Zeiss shared with him that the design of the lens was covered with over 250 patents, driving home the difficulty of making this optical system work.