Ixi introduces "auto-focus glasses" that switch from reading to long-distance prescriptions

Finnish company Ixi has revealed what it describes as the world's first "auto-focus glasses", which change their optical power depending on where the wearer is looking.

Set to be presented tomorrow at Helsinki tech event Slush, Ixi's auto-focus glasses are a substitute for traditional multifocal or reading glasses with a prescription for near vision that is only activated when the wearer is looking at close objects.

Instead of conventional lenses, the glasses feature "tunable" lenses, with liquid crystal technology that changes position as needed to adjust the direction of light as it heads towards the eye.

The technology runs on low power, and in the working prototype Ixi is presenting at Slush, it has managed to pack it into a frame weighing just 22 grams – lighter than any pair of smart glasses on the market.

The glasses are targeted at people with presbyopia, the far-sightedness that every one of us develops with age as the lens and surrounding eye muscle changes, making reading at close distances difficult.

While bifocal, varifocal or progressive lenses are the established solution for existing glasses-wearers in this situation, Ixi founder and CEO Niko Eiden explained that they are far from ideal.

"Usually people between 20 and 45 are quite happy with their glasses," Eiden said.

"But [with multifocal glasses] it's a blend of multiple lenses that they blend into one, which means that there is a lot of distortion, because there needs to be these transition zones, and those transition zones are usually full of aberrations, and they twist the world."

As a result, only a "very narrow channel" within the lens is actually usable and people will often tilt their heads in order to use the segment of the lens that accords to where they want to look.

Eiden, who had a background working on augmented-reality glasses, including co-founding the company Varjo, felt that tunable lenses combined with eye-tracking technology held a better solution.

The lenses use liquid crystals – a well-established technology for displays best known for its use in old-fashioned calculators or digital watches.

In those displays – which are famously low power, running for years on a single battery – a layer of liquid crystals is suspended in an electric field and the colour changes according to the position that those crystals are twisted into when adjusting the voltage.

In the Ixi glasses, the same principle is at work, but the liquid crystals are sandwiched between a transparent lens rather than colour-producing filters.

When deactivated, the crystals are flat, and when activated, they twist into a position that emulates the shape of a traditional convex lens, only at a thickness of 0.02 millimetres.

Activation happens automatically through the use of eye-tracking technology that recognises the subtle convergence that happens to focus on objects at a close distance.

This is another area where Ixi has innovated, devising a tracking method using LEDs rather than the camera-based systems that feature in contemporary virtual-reality headsets and require a lot of computing power.

The system is power efficient enough that the company has been able to fit all of the electronic components – including an all-day battery – into a plastic frame that is the same size as a conventional pair of glasses.

"We are for the first time now introducing a product that can actually use technology to help people to see better and actually have a more natural view of the world than with traditional eyewear," Eiden said.

When it comes to style, the Ixi team's approach has been to start with classic frame shapes that chief design officer Timo Yliluoma described as "modern and timeless at the same time", and they plan to launch with one square and one round option.

Instead of variety, they are prioritising customisability and ergonomics, with a system that they are calling TrueFit that allows customers to choose different nose pieces for different face shapes. The frames' angle and fit can further be adjusted by local opticians through standard heating and bending around the temples and tips, which are free of electronic components.

Ixi intends to sell its product through existing opticians and announced in September that it had entered into a manufacturing partnership with Swiss lens-maker Optiswiss.

The company's offering comes during a time when many new smart glasses are entering the market, almost all focused on expansive AI functionality. This has included the Meta's Ray-Ban Displays and Even Realities' Even G2s.

The photography is courtesy of Ixi.

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