CES 2022: Smart contact lenses arrive

At CES 2022 in Las Vegas this week, InWith Corporation demonstrated an electronic soft contact lens platform designed for the masses to wear comfortably. Not surprisingly, it has been pitched as a tool for the metaverse, promising easy transition from real-world to metaverse, at will.

InWith is aiming at FDA Breakthrough Clearance this year and to put the futuristic contact lenses on the market shortly thereafter.

“The first applications of the technology will be ‘tunable vision’ via mobile device and ‘augmented vision’ coupled with mobile device control,” says the company. “These markets have been called multi-billion dollars by themselves, but the ultimate application may be fully immersive Metaverse viewing, offering users a super lightweight, virtually invisible way to go back and forth from real-world viewing to the Metaverse.”

The product announcement offers no shortage of innovation, claiming several hundred patents, but also no shortage of hype.

“The coming greater Metaverse market has been estimated to be worth potentially a trillion dollars by industry experts,” says InWith.

The technology being displayed at CES 2022 is a configuration to enable developers to place augmented vision display chip applications into any soft hydrogel contact lenses of the kind that millions of people wear daily. InWith says it is the only company that has publicly displayed this capability to integrate component circuitry into modern, soft contact lens materials. It is now working with Fortune 50 companies to introduce the first viable iterations of this technology in the market.

Today’s announcements follow the company’s 2020 display of stretchable electronic circuitry in name brand contact lenses.

InWith has pioneered key techniques of integration of solid components and circuits into hydrogel materials by allowing the materials to expand and contract in the normal manufacturing process. This enables multiple developers to create displays and ophthalmic improvement applications for contact lenses and intraocular lenses.

“From the latest AR/XR Metaverse visual applications to giving better sight to people who suffer from Myopia or Presbyopia, InWith technology enables an electronic revolution for the future of eyesight and ophthalmic capabilities, connected and tunable with mobile devices,” the company said at CES.