This is for me!

Roberto Saracco August 23, 2014 Blog 98 Views

I have worn glasses for as long as I remember, so I am used to them. Yet, the increase of experience (ageing) is now forcing me to use two pairs of glasses one as I did before and one to look at the screen of my iPad and computer.
This is not very convenient (using multi-focal glasses apparently does not fit well with my brain vision system…) and so you can imagine how pleased I am to see this news from Berkeley where a team of researchers in cooperation with others at the MIT have invented a vision-correcting display.
For a full explanation on how it works you can watch the clip.
Rather than using lenses to look at the screen a software can adapt the rendering of images on the screen taking into account the specific vision impairment of the viewer. This has the addition advantage that not all visual impairment due to irregular shape of the cornea, known as high order aberration, can be resolved by glasses, whilst a software in principle can moro any image into any shape to fit the viewer impairment (this does not applies to impairment in the retina of course).
The trick is based on adding a pinhole sheet (sandwiched between two plastic layers for rigidity and to provide the right spacing from the screen) and a software that can change the luminosity of the pixels on the display so that the image gets distorted in the desired way and through a process called "deconvolution" the rays flowing through the pin hole layer are directed in such a way to recreate a sharp image on the viewer (that in practice will compensate the distortion artificially created in the displayed image by the opposite distortion created by his impairment).
I have not had the opportunity of trying this out but I have it on my agenda for my next trip to Berkeley or MIT.

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.

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