Israeli startup brings hi-tech to reading glasses

• Published date: 15 June 2021
• Date: 15 June 2021
• Author: ZEV STUB
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

For some people, checking your phone or receiving messages while strolling outside on a sunny day may mean switching glasses every 12 minutes.

Petah Tikva-based DeepOptics has an easier solution: its 32°N technology, which it says provides the world's first adaptive-focus sunglasses.

With a swipe of the finger along the temple of the lens frame, the wearer can make the glasses switch between "scenic mode" and "reading mode," with different vision settings that are set via smartphone app.

The 32°N sunglasses use a proprietary pixelated liquid crystals technology that enables the swift transition. It was developed over the course of 10 years by the company.

DeepOptics launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign on Tuesday, allowing consumers to preorder the sunglasses for the first time.

"Tunable lenses have been the holy grail of the glasses industry for a long time," DeepOptics CEO and co-founder Yariv Haddad said at the company's office. "Every glasses company would have loved to have the ability to offer customers above age 45 glasses that can change their focus.

"There are bifocal and multifocal lenses, but those require you to look through different parts of the lens for different purposes. This is the first step in a very big journey of bringing dynamics into the vision-correction industry, and we have a lot of products in our road map."

Future versions will offer the option for prescription lenses that can adapt for reading at close distances, he said.

Haddad handed me a lens to view up close and said: "What you're holding is actually two thin glasses, and between them is the liquid crystal. That crystal has several million pixels, and our technology allows us to send different electric voltages to each pixel to influence the refractive index of the pixel. That allows us to dynamically control and change each pixel very quickly."

Before I tried on a pair of glasses for a live demo, Haddad and another worker set up a profile for me on the app, which automatically measured the distance between my pupils and helped me fine-tune the level of adjustment I would need. Once that was set up, I was given a book to read.

As it happens, my youthful eyes...