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.

该小企业创新研究 (SBIR) 项目具有更广泛的影响/商业潜力，旨在缓解近一个世纪以来一直困扰科学界的人眼状况。眼屈光不正是影响美国各族裔人群眼部健康的最普遍疾病。老花眼是这种屈光不正的一种普遍形式，影响着 1.25 亿美国人和当今全世界超过 18 亿人。这是由于人眼晶状体自然老化，聚焦和再聚焦能力下降造成的。症状包括视力模糊、浑浊、眼睛疲劳和头痛，有时严重到影响受试者的生活质量和工作能力。自1900年代初期以来，老花眼的传统治疗方法是使用固定度数多焦点和渐进眼镜，但不能解决与年龄相关的调节能力丧失的核心问题。这项 SBIR 工作的主要目标是开发关键的高性能可调谐智能眼镜，该眼镜具有良好的稳定性和恢复算法，有助于恢复这种失去的能力。这款 21 世纪的设备是世界上第一款智能自动对焦眼镜，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。该SBIR一期项目提出实现21世纪可变功率智能眼镜商业化的可行性，该眼镜将恢复人眼因老化而失去的老花眼自然调节能力。这些自适应眼镜结合了具有可变功率的流体透镜、超轻型执行器、距离传感器和嵌入式控制电子设备，能够持续为不同距离的物体产生全视场锐聚焦视图。对于该提案，我们重点研究和开发这些设备的两个重要方面，这是成功商业化的关键。首先，通过使用低漂移材料代替 PDMS 来提高这些自适应眼镜的粘弹性膜的长期稳定性；其次，采用位移传感器纳入闭环反馈机制，以校正滞后引起的漂移以及透镜驱动压电执行器的退化。在第一个任务中，我们的目标是实现小于 120 毫屈光度/年的光功率漂移，在第二个任务中，实现小于 83 毫屈光度/年的漂移。这些里程碑将使镜片在其预期 3 年使用寿命内漂移小于 0.25 屈光度，这对于商业级眼镜镜片至关重要。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持以及更广泛的影响审查标准。