CI.N has recently reported a few times on the rise of wearable technology. When we spoke with one of the founders of Tyme Wear about their smart shirt which seemed to be state of the art. Well, if that seemed like cutting-edge technology, then Mojo Vision, with its Mojo contact lens, is literally in sci-fi territory.
Mojo Lens is a “smart contact lens with an integrated display that gives you timely information without interrupting your concentration”. It’s actually a tiny little dash type display in a contact lens – if we can get through that without reference Minority report then medals all around!
We spoke with David Hobbs, Senior Director of Product Management at Mojo Vision. He joins us from San Jose, in the San Francisco Bay Area. We only start slightly envious.
Mojo: through the eyes of the lens
David tells us that Mojo was born out of one man’s quest to envision himself as “the six million dollar man”. Drew Perkins, CEO and Co-Founder is a serial entrepreneur. He has the status of co-founder of several Internet startups, most of them in the “back end” sphere. We are also told that we owe him the significant role he played in establishing the peer-to-peer (P2P) network.
After selling his previous business, he underwent surgery to correct the cataracts he had developed. Although fixed, Drew found that he now needed reading glasses. For most of us, that might mean a quick trip to Specsavers to pick up new specs. But, for a Silicon Valley-based tech entrepreneur, a 2-4-1 deal on frames and lenses just isn’t good enough. Instead, Drew embarked on a quest to not only fix his eyesight, but also afford the bionic vision of the Six Million Dollar Man.
We’re told that any quest to give yourself “bionic eyes” simply has to start by speaking with Dr. Michael Deering – now Mojo’s chief scientist. Dr. Deering has been working on virtual reality related systems since the 1970s, so he is quite literally one of the pioneers in this field. After retirement, fishing and gardening (at least not IRL) were obviously not going to cut. Instead, he set out to figure out how to create the most effective display in the world. He spent years researching how vision works and what would be required to do so. By chance, Drew and Dr. Deering found each other. They talked about their “visions” (pun absolutely intentional) and how it might work. They realized that between them the future could be advanced by several decades. The relationship between the three founders is completed by CTO Mike Weimer. Another serial entrepreneur with nothing better to do than advance the 50-year-old future.
Since its founding in 2015, Mojo has far exceeded the initial hope for a “six million dollar” vision and has raised approximately $205 million in investment. Even adjusted for inflation, at $37,675,945.95, Drew far exceeded his original hope, but it’s clear that the thirty-seven million six hundred seventy five thousand nine hundred forty five dollar man and ninety-five cents isn’t quite as catchy. By the way, the Walt Disney Investment Fund is now a major backer.
The Mojo Vision
“We really see AR (augmented reality) – at least immediately – as a great opportunity to take something like a wearable that’s on your wrist and turn it into something that can keep you looking more up and more focused on the game. world around you,” David tells us. It’s a frequent sentiment that we saw throughout our conversation. The Mojo Lens will hopefully reduce the information we see in our normal daily lives. Present only what is necessary and reduce distractions.
“We want to reduce the overall distraction that technology can bring to us. When I’m on the trails on a mountain bike, I just want to focus on the trail. I don’t want to stop the ride and pull out my phone to check where I need to go. We can only agree with David.
While the applications to a wider population are clear, Mojo has worked extensively with sports and athletic partners (hence this article). Mojo has several strategic partnerships with a host of fitness brands, including Adidas Running, Wearable X (yoga), Slopes (snow sports), 18Birdies (golf) and, most relevantly for us, Trailforks for cycling. With these partnerships, Mojo aims to use its market expertise to understand and deliver the right data to athletes across different disciplines.
For example, via Slopes, David tells us they learned “the most important thing people want to know is ‘where are my buddies on the mountain?'” and “one of the really interesting things that we learned [through Trailforks], especially with mountain biking, there is a real desire for simple directions. The trails, although well maintained, may not be well marked. So we hear people say, “I thought I was on a trail, so I had come down the mountain, only to have to go back up it to get back on the right trail.” “With the Mojo contact lens trail seekers could have simple arrow directions in their field of vision, eliminating the need to look at a bike computer when riding a narrow trail at lightning speed.
On the side of the road, of course, “power is really important for people to speed up a climb and practice…but again, it’s also good to be able to have turn-by-turn directions wherever you’re looking.” We think this makes it safer for cyclists in cities and built environments, allowing you to keep an eye on traffic. »
One of the coolest features being worked on is the ability to see airtime while ATVing. “At the moment,” David said, “we’re at the stage of ‘yeah that would be cool, how do we do that?'”
It’s this focus on sports and training that Mojo hopes to stand out where products like Google Glass have failed to gain traction. Cyclists are a key use case that has been identified by a series of studies – over 300 cyclists and 1,300 sports enthusiasts – who are particularly likely to show more data all the time.
How it works
The system itself is made up of two lenses. Both will correct your vision. The most important thing in the lens is the display. “I think we rightfully have one of the coolest teams in the world working on the display. They made a screen the size of a grain of sand, with a 300 x 300 pixel display. display gives us the information that you will see from Mojo Lens,” says David.
The display itself is effectively invisible. It is physically so close to the eye that you will never be able to focus directly on it. There’s tiny projection optics on the screen that projects emitted light onto your retina in such a way that it looks like you’re seeing content displayed at a comfortable viewing distance, superimposed on whatever else you’re watching in the world. real. This is important because it means your eyes won’t get tired looking at it, like they can on AR glasses.
To receive notifications and updates, it must be connected to the Internet like any portable accessory. That means the first-gen Lens will need to be paired with a smartphone, but since Mojo Lens is a future-proof device, who knows if that will evolve over time. David describes this relationship as your device acting as an “air traffic controller” or relay between you and the lens. In between, a small portable accessory is needed. It could be something you put on your hand or wrist or have under your clothes. This provides the wireless protocol that powers the lens. The lens itself – for obvious reasons – only has a small processor, so the extra laptop provides extra processing power.
By using movement in your eyes, you will be able to extract certain information. There’s a small image sensor, which can detect what you’re looking at and thus change what’s displayed. “He could understand when I look at a pile of letters, so a book for example. The question then is ‘so I’m reading, do I want to start seeing a bunch of notifications from a department store? Probably not. But if it was from a family member, that would be more relevant, wouldn’t it? If there was a steering wheel in front of me, we’d make sure we didn’t hit you with a bunch of options. Much of it should be passive consumption of information.
Above all, from an ethical point of view, David assures us that the device does not record your movements. This is not an “always watching/listening” smart type device. It is “a very closed system, which uses very rudimentary embedded technology which is not shared”.
Since it is a scleral lens that sits on the white of the eye, people are expected to be able to wear them for between a year and a year and a half. Store them each night in a special case that will clean and recharge the contact lens.
where are you now?
“If you asked me a few years ago, when we would have wearable lenses, I would have said 50, right? But now we’ve already had a few dozen people wearing it. We’ve been working on this for six years as an incorporated company, but we think that’s way more than the number of years it takes to release a product. We think we are still a few years away at this point.
Being a contact lens and a medical product, there is a complex process to gain regulatory approval – all medical device regulatory professionals then have your chance to help invent the future of invisible computing.
“This year we are developing what we call a ‘comprehensive lens’. There are a ton of new features we are adding like medical grade batteries that will charge the device as opposed to wireless; we’ve got a bunch of IMU’s in the lens, so we can understand where the eyes are moving, and all the information is retained and displayed nicely and crisply in front of your eyes; and we have new one IC protocols for wireless data. All of this needs to be incorporated now, which we believe should give us an idea of what we want to submit to regulators for approval.
business model
About 60% of people in the United States already wear some kind of corrective contact lens. While current AR glasses often don’t work like real glasses. Mojo sees these people as its primary market and a way to “give these people some sort of ‘superpower’.”
In the United States, at least, that means it will be classified as a medical device, which must be prescribed by optometrists.
All in all, this looks like a potential “game changer”, the progress of which we’ll be following avidly. And look at this. Not a single reference to Minority report. Back pats all around!
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