I contacted Bosch in 2020 about buying BML500P retinal projectors in bulk, but they postponed the sale for several months because they were in talks with a major undisclosed customer about potentially exclusive rights to the patent. I never heard back.
zh3 43 minutes ago [-]
The lens seems pretty similiar to PinTILT, who embed miniature reflectors in the lens - there's a nice whitepaper available by email on their site.
"TDK demonstrates the world’s first direct retinal projection display for smart glasses using a meta-optic mirror". The qualifier is different. "using a meta-optic mirror" versus "using oscillating mirrors"
I appreciate your comment on the history.
sleepybrett 2 hours ago [-]
I saw a demo retinal dispaly at the university of washington in the late 90s.
specialist 8 minutes ago [-]
At the HITlab?
I interviewed Dan Bricklin in '88 or '89 (for a magazine). Trippy dude. Lots of ideas.
Bricklin stated the optic nerve is exposed brain. So that when a laser projects an imagine directly on to the retina, it's like programming the brain.
Nope.
I decided right then and there I never needed a laser pointing at my eye ball.
kotaKat 5 hours ago [-]
Don't forget the Sony DSC-HX99 retinal projection camera kit, built with QD Laser. They had a custom RETISSA NEOVIEWER commissioned for the camera to allow for low-vision users to leverage it for photography.
Sadly no longer available. I've seen through one and it was vividly clear and detailed without my glasses on at all and it felt so gamechanging to have that kind of display technology in my hands.
I wrote a short story years ago about a tech CEO going to trial over a similar technology that turned out to mass-blind people. Just food for thought I guess.
butokai 3 hours ago [-]
I have a quite badly displaced retina due to a detachment. I wonder if technology like this could be used in conjunction with mapping the distorted retina in order to obtain a correct perceived image.
qingcharles 43 minutes ago [-]
I have a friend with the same issue and thought the same thing.
Comment above points to interesting Japanese device too:
Pretty much all my patents are being infringed at this point.
Lesson to anyone getting patents, they don’t matter unless you have $100M to fight Microsoft or oracle with. At that point might as well just keep your 100M and forget it
vessenes 5 hours ago [-]
When you file a patent the patent attorneys tell you how critical it is to do so.
When someone infringes a patent, especially if you’re not commercializing your patent, the patent attorneys tell you, “wow, that looks really tough.”
It’s a big company game at this point, in general, or you’d need something that drives an immense amount of value before the patenting seems worth it, as far as I can tell.
foobarian 2 hours ago [-]
OK sooo... is there a way to get investors to cover the legal costs?
Or just outright sell the patents to a competing big company and let them duke it out. Now at least you end up with some money.
buellerbueller 4 hours ago [-]
Maybe we should get rid of patent protection. We already have enough welfare for megacorps, and this is just another form of it.
ta988 1 hours ago [-]
This is the solution, they do not push for innovation anymore (if ever).
alphawhisky 1 hours ago [-]
Honestly, this would have pretty positive effects on costs of medicine, replacement parts for machinery, etc. It definitely hampers the regulatory capture moat that these companies build.
FLeXMurphy 1 hours ago [-]
>Pretty much all [...] are being infringed at this point.
So, funny you say that. You know those AI companies that seem to have really good training data...
kragen 1 hours ago [-]
They are pretty inarguable prior art for anyone who wants to compete with TDK.
SapporoChris 2 days ago [-]
Did you file for a patent in Japan? Foreign countries are not bound by United States patents; U.S. patent rights only apply within the United States.
bluGill 5 hours ago [-]
Most countries, including the Japan and the US, recognize a patent in another country for filing purposes. Which is to say, if you need to sue someone in Japan, yes you need a patent in Japan. However, you bring your US patent to the Japan Patent Office and they consider that as your file date and so you can sue for infringements that happen before your patent in Japan was issued.
If this is actually useful for you, of course, you need a patent lawyer in the specific country you're talking about, which is not cheap, and that's why the other posters said millions of dollars. Patents are not worth it for most people because you still have to pay lawyers to get anything out of them. You also pay for your time in court, acting as witness and testifying and watching court proceedings instead of doing your own business.
AndrewKemendo 2 days ago [-]
Fair point
airstrike 4 hours ago [-]
When I wanted to file a patent, the attorneys told me it was only good as my ability to enforce it, which really means how much money I have vs the other guy
account42 1 hours ago [-]
Good. Patents should not reward people for simply being the first to have an idea that others can easily discover independently.
intrasight 5 hours ago [-]
I learned that lesson too. But I also learned that you get what you pay for in terms of the patent attorney's skill in crafting claims.
krunck 1 hours ago [-]
"The current meta-optic mirror supports monochrome operation."
I would love monochromatic vector(not raster) HUD in my glasses. I could play the original Asteroids. Bah, bah, bah bah. Pew, pew!
sourweasel 42 minutes ago [-]
Asteroids is classic, but for monochrome vector games I would vote for the tank-vs-tank game 'Battlezone', especially if they could do separate images per eye and allow for stereoscopic rendering.
Hopefully they add a color model so we can play Tempest.
m4rtink 56 minutes ago [-]
Snowcrash here we go! ;)
qwertytyyuu 4 hours ago [-]
That's so cool finally actually glasses instead of sunglasses!
hartator 4 hours ago [-]
Isn’t this dangerous for the eyes?
Regex777 4 hours ago [-]
That's the first thing i have searched the current blue screen have already caused enough damage to eyes. but ig it's still in early prototype and i would be appreciated if they provided the affects that it might causes to eyes.
i thought it wasn't about the eyes but about the Melatonin production, sleep and circadian rhythm.
jwr 2 hours ago [-]
That has been proven to be false, too. The blueness of the light doesn't matter, the brightness does. Any bright light might affect melatonin production and circadian rhythms.
Selling blue-light filter coatings is a big business, though.
moron4hire 3 hours ago [-]
As exemplared by the person I was replying to, there are folks who think blue light from screens is specifically damaging to the eyes.
moron4hire 4 hours ago [-]
Light being from a laser does not automatically make it more dangerous. You can even shine a regular class IIIa laser pointer, with warning label still intact, directly into your eye and you'll blink long before it will do any damage.
The issue is intensity of light. These retinal projector lasers are not intense enough to damage your eye. A regular light at the same intensity as a powerful laser would damage your eyes just as much. It's just a lot harder to create a regular light that can reach that level of intensity.
sleepybrett 2 hours ago [-]
played with one of these 'retinal displays' back in the late 90s at the university of washington. Pretty crazy stuff, apparently some guy with massive cornea damage was able to see the retinal projection clearly. At the time it was just monochrome and fairly low resolution (by todays standards) but very exciting.
tash_2s 3 days ago [-]
TLDR: They demoed a direct retinal projection display with a thin, transparent mirror embedded in the lens, enabling glasses that look more like everyday eyewear while reducing costs compared with waveguide-based designs.
This picture (with English text) has a bit of the detail showing their reflector structure, which is also in one of the pictures of your Japanese page:
I first read about direct retinal projection displays (using oscillating mirrors no less) in Mondo 2000 [^1]
Hard to find much on the "Private Eye" hardware as I guess Reflection Technology (the manufacturer) went outta business in the mid 90's
But a 700x280 display painted onto your retina that looked like a full-ish size display hovering in space nonetheless, and downright epic for 1989
[^1]: https://microship.com/winnelife-interview-with-steve-roberts...
For the curious, a bit more info and some pics on these sites
https://glassdevelopment.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/hmd-histor...
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/reflection-technolog...
* https://letinar.com/en/pintilt
I appreciate your comment on the history.
I interviewed Dan Bricklin in '88 or '89 (for a magazine). Trippy dude. Lots of ideas.
Bricklin stated the optic nerve is exposed brain. So that when a laser projects an imagine directly on to the retina, it's like programming the brain.
Nope.
I decided right then and there I never needed a laser pointing at my eye ball.
Sadly no longer available. I've seen through one and it was vividly clear and detailed without my glasses on at all and it felt so gamechanging to have that kind of display technology in my hands.
https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/compact-cameras/all-vlo...
It's now transformed though, into the RETISSA VIEWCLEAR for your phone - https://retissa-vc.qdlaser.com/en/
Comment above points to interesting Japanese device too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49977339
https://kemendo.com/pdfs/USPatent10757400.pdf
Pretty much all my patents are being infringed at this point.
Lesson to anyone getting patents, they don’t matter unless you have $100M to fight Microsoft or oracle with. At that point might as well just keep your 100M and forget it
When someone infringes a patent, especially if you’re not commercializing your patent, the patent attorneys tell you, “wow, that looks really tough.”
It’s a big company game at this point, in general, or you’d need something that drives an immense amount of value before the patenting seems worth it, as far as I can tell.
Or just outright sell the patents to a competing big company and let them duke it out. Now at least you end up with some money.
So, funny you say that. You know those AI companies that seem to have really good training data...
If this is actually useful for you, of course, you need a patent lawyer in the specific country you're talking about, which is not cheap, and that's why the other posters said millions of dollars. Patents are not worth it for most people because you still have to pay lawyers to get anything out of them. You also pay for your time in court, acting as witness and testifying and watching court proceedings instead of doing your own business.
I would love monochromatic vector(not raster) HUD in my glasses. I could play the original Asteroids. Bah, bah, bah bah. Pew, pew!
Hopefully they add a color model so we can play Tempest.
Selling blue-light filter coatings is a big business, though.
The issue is intensity of light. These retinal projector lasers are not intense enough to damage your eye. A regular light at the same intensity as a powerful laser would damage your eyes just as much. It's just a lot harder to create a regular light that can reach that level of intensity.
This Japanese article has a few more details: https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/2145266.html
https://www.tdk.com/system/files/featured_stories/features-o...