Google isn’t the only one working on augmented reality eyewear — a company called Innovega has been developing augmented reality contact lenses for years. Now, DARPA has ordered prototypes so the U.S. military can start testing the technology.
Unfortunately, these contact lenses don’t have displays of their own, similar to the ones being developed by scientists from the University of Washington. Instead, they’re designed to be paired up with a heads-up display (HUD) similar to Google’s Project Glass. That’s because what they do is give you the capacity to see both the display in front of your eyes and your environment around you. You never lose focus of either, so it’s like having two different visions at once as you can see in the video above.
On the battlefield, soldiers can use the contact lenses to work with smaller HUDs than they’re using now to receive feeds from drones and computers. In spite of the fact that the project was partly-funded by DARPA, Innovega also sees other possible uses for the contact lenses.