Banning the Rays: Smart Sunglasses Darken Vision Glares

We’ve known plenty of people who don’t bat an eye at dropping a couple of hundred dollars on a pair of designer sunglasses, but even those mega-expensive shades can’t do what this rather nerdy pair can do. Physicist Chris Mullin and electrical engineer Albert Titus developed these sunglasses and call them “Dynamic Eyes.” They can tell where bright spots are in your field of vision and darken those spots to cancel out the glares.

The lenses in the glasses aren’t the typical plastic – they are actually small LCD screens. Certain pixels on the screens darken according to where the tiny nose piece-embedded camera detects glares. The darkened spots move with the user’s head movements following a barely perceptible delay. When there are no bright spots in the wearer’s field of vision the Dynamic Eyes act just like any other pair of sunglasses.

Predictably, the military is interested in this awesome invention – so are the automotive, recreation and healthcare industries. It isn’t available just yet, but the prototype is amazing enough that we’re already prepared to hand over a stack of cash…but hopefully they’ll get a little more stylish with future generations.

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See more in Industrial Design or under Technology. August, 2011.