SBIR Phase I: Tunable Lenses For Smart Eyeglasses with Low-Drift and Light-Weight

SBIR 第一阶段：低漂移、轻量化智能眼镜可调镜片

• 批准号: 1819427
• 负责人: Tridib Ghosh
• 金额: $ 22.5万
• 依托单位: SharpEyes, LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-07-01 至 2019-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1819427&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Tunable; Lenses; Smart

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project entails alleviation of a human eye condition that has obscured the scientific community for almost a century. Refractive eye error is the most pervasive condition affecting the ocular health of the U.S. population, across all ethnicities. Presbyopia, a widespread form of such refractive error, affects 125 million Americans, and over 1.8 billion people worldwide today. It is caused by reduction of focusing and re-focusing ability of the human eye lens with natural aging. The symptoms range from blurred vision, haziness, and eye strain to headaches, which are sometimes severe enough to affect the quality of life and work ability of subjects. Since the early 1900s, presbyopia has been traditionally treated with fixed power multi-focal and progressive eyeglasses that do not solve the core problem of age-related loss of accommodative ability. The principal goal of this SBIR work is development of key high performance tunable Smart Eyeglasses with good stability and restoration algorithms that will help restore this lost ability. This 21st century device, the world?s first smart auto-focus eyewear, will offer personalized full field normal vision restoration to presbyopic subjects and generate jobs and revenues worth billions of dollars. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to implement the feasibility of commercialization of 21st Century variable power smart eyeglasses that will restore the natural accommodation of human eye that is lost to presbyopia due to aging. These adaptive glasses use a combination of fluidic lenses with variable power, ultra-light actuators, distance sensors, and embedded control electronics to continually produce full-field sharply focused view for objects at variable distances. For this proposal, we focus on the research and development of two important aspects of these devices which are key to a successful commercialization. First, is improving the long-term stability of the viscoelastic membranes of these adaptive glasses by using low drift materials instead of PDMS, and secondly, incorporating a closed-loop feedback mechanism using displacement sensors to account for the correction of drifts resulting from the hysteresis and degradation of lens-driving piezo actuators. In the first task, our goal is to achieve an optical power drift of less than 120 milli-Diopter/year, and in the second task, achieve a drift less than 83 milli-Diopter/year. These milestones will result in a lens with drift that is less than 0.25 Diopter over its expected 3 year lifetime, critical for a commercial grade eyewear lens.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力需要减轻人类眼睛状况，该眼睛掩盖了近一个世纪的科学界。屈光不确定是影响所有种族的美国人群的最普遍的状况。长老会是这种折射错误的广泛形式，影响了1.25亿美国人，当今全球超过18亿人。它是由于自然衰老的人眼镜镜的焦点和重新关注能力的降低而引起的。症状的范围从视力模糊，朦胧和眼睛压力到头痛，有时很严重，可以影响受试者的生活质量和工作能力。自1900年代初以来，长老会传统上接受了固定功率多焦点和进步的眼镜治疗，这些眼镜无法解决与年龄相关的适应性能力丧失的核心问题。这项SBIR工作的主要目标是开发具有良好稳定性和恢复算法的关键高性能可调眼镜，这将有助于恢复这种丢失的能力。这个21世纪的设备是世界上第一个智能自动对焦眼镜，将为老年人提供个性化的全场正常视力修复，并创造价值数十亿美元的工作和收入。这个SBIR I期项目提议实施21世纪可变功率智能眼镜的商业化的可行性，这些眼镜将恢复由于衰老而丢失给长老会的人眼的自然住宿。这些自适应眼镜结合了流体镜头，具有可变功率，超光执行器，距离传感器和嵌入式控制电子设备的组合，以在可变距离处的对象持续地产生全面的浓缩视图。对于这项建议，我们专注于这些设备的两个重要方面的研究和开发，这是成功商业化的关键。首先，通过使用低漂移材料而不是PDMS来改善这些自适应眼镜的粘弹性膜的长期稳定性，其次，使用位移传感器结合了闭环反馈机制，以说明校正由晶状体驱动器驱动器驱动器电击仪的滞后和降解引起的漂移。在第一个任务中，我们的目标是每年达到低于120毫米的光功率漂移，而在第二个任务中，将不到83毫米二聚体/年的漂移。这些里程碑将导致镜头的漂移量低于其预期的3年寿命，这对于商业级眼镜镜头至关重要。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛影响的评估标准来评估的。