Hate reaching for your glasses every time you need to read something on your phone, tablet, or computer? You may not have to in the future, thanks to a display that corrects itself according to your prescription.
It’s the result of a research project being carried out by scientists from UC Berkeley, MIT, and Microsoft. The light from each individual pixel can be directed by a special filter that sits in front of the display, altering the way it reaches the viewer’s eye. The way it’s described in the team’s research paper, it sounds a little bit like the inverse of a Lytro camera sensor. It’s sort of tricking the brain into receiving clear images by anticipating the distortion that will occur once it reaches the eye.
By feeding a particular user’s prescription into a system ahead of time, the display can render images that appear crisp and clear even when they’re not wearing corrective lenses. The filter can even adjust to ocular conditions that can’t be corrected with glasses — including trefoil and spherical aberration which only occur in about 15% of people with some kind of distortion.
While it’s possible that MIT’s display breakthrough could also be applied to larger screens like computer monitors and televisions, it’s a better fit for the ones we don’t share. eReaders, tablets, and smartphones seem like a perfect fit, since they’re generally only being peered at by a single set of eyes. MIT prof Ramesh Raskar notes that the system could work with multiple users if adapted to a display with a higher pixel density. For their paper, the team used an iPod touch with a density of 326ppi. The Galaxy S5 LTE-A is nearly double that already, so a two-viewer adaptable display might not actually be that far off.
As amazing as this display sounds, it might not be a great fit for desktop monitors. While you’d be able to see the images on screen without your glasses, other real objects on your desk and in your office probably wouldn’t be in focus. Still, it might be nice to be able to take a break from wearing glasses once in a while — and for office workers who stare at their screens for hours on end, MIT’s display could be a real blessing.
They’ll just have to hold out for a few more years, though. The researchers figure it’ll take a while to build a prototype that works outside a lab setting, and they also need to integrate a Kinect-like system to track the position of the user’s head. The display currently only works with a fixed focal distance — any head bobbing and things will go out of focus.