Autofocals: Gaze-Contingent Eyeglasses for Presbyopes

Digital Content Association of Japan (DCAJ) and ACM SIGGRAPH revised Cooperation Agreement in 2014, and started this collaboration between DCEXPO Innovative Technologies (I-Tech) and SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies (E-Tech). ACM SIGGRAPH selects one distinguished technical exhibit at DCEXPO and shows it in the E-Tech Program at the next SIGGRAPH on a priority basis and DCAJ selects one distinguished E-Tech exhibit at SIGGRAPH and does the same at the next DCEXPO.

The DCEXPO Special Prize winner selected from E-Tech exhibits at SIGGRAPH 2018 will be exhibited at DCEXPO 2018 and also commended on the center stage of DCEXPO 2018 on November 15.

Technical details

Presbyopia, the loss of accommodation due to the stiffening of the crystalline lens, affects nearly 20% of people worldwide. Traditional forms of presbyopia correction use fixed focal elements that trade off field of view or stereo vision for a greater range of distances at which the wearer can focus. None of these offer natural refocusing. In this work, we built a new presbyopia correction, dubbed Autofocals, which externally mimics the natural accommodation response by combining data from eye trackers and a depth sensor, to automatically drive focus-tunable lenses. Wearers reported that the Autofocals compare favorably with their current corrective eyewear.