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

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力需要缓解困扰科学界近一个世纪的人眼状况。屈光不正是影响所有种族的美国人眼睛健康的最普遍的疾病。老花眼是这种屈光不正的一种普遍形式，目前影响着1.25亿美国人，以及全球超过18亿人。这是由于自然老化导致人眼晶状体的调焦和再调焦能力降低所致。这些症状从视力模糊、模糊、眼睛疲劳到头痛，有时严重到足以影响受试者的生活质量和工作能力。自20世纪初以来，老花眼的治疗传统上一直采用固定镜片、多焦点和渐进式眼镜，但这种眼镜并不能解决与年龄相关的调节能力丧失这一核心问题。这项SBIR工作的主要目标是开发关键的高性能可调智能眼镜，具有良好的稳定性和恢复算法，将有助于恢复这种失去的能力。这款21世纪的设备--世界上第一款智能自动对焦眼镜--S将为老花眼患者提供个性化的全视野正常视力恢复，并创造价值数十亿美元的就业机会和收入。本次SBIR一期项目提出实施21世纪可变倍数智能眼镜商业化的可行性，将恢复因老化而丧失的人眼自然调节能力。这些自适应眼镜使用了具有可变功率的流体透镜、超光致动器、距离传感器和嵌入式控制电子设备的组合，以连续产生可变距离物体的全视场清晰聚焦图像。对于这一提议，我们专注于这些设备的两个重要方面的研究和开发，这两个方面是成功商业化的关键。首先，通过使用低漂移材料代替PDMS来提高这些自适应玻璃的粘弹性膜的长期稳定性，其次，采用使用位移传感器的闭环反馈机制来解决透镜驱动的压电驱动器的滞后和退化造成的漂移的校正。在第一项任务中，我们的目标是实现光功率漂移低于120毫度/年，在第二项任务中，我们的目标是实现低于83毫度/年的漂移。这些里程碑将导致镜片在其预期的3年寿命内漂移小于0.25屈光度，这对商业级镜片至关重要。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.