The Future of Sight

Mojo Vision’s working prototypes prove AR contact lenses could be more than science fiction.

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tle with bulky headsets, and tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, and Snap attempt augmented reality glasses, startup Mojo Vision has been aiming for an even more seamless medium: a contact lens. The company revealed the world’s first working prototype earlier this year, which can overlay users’ vision with basic graphics such as weather icons, arrows, and text. Mojo isn’t the first company to dream of an AR lens, but even its own engineers doubted the feasibility of such a product—until they built it. Their breakthrough is a minuscule screen, slightly larger than a grain of sand, which directs 70,000 pixels to the eye’s retina. It’s an achievement more than a decade in the making, due largely to the work of Mojo’s chief science officer, Michael Deering, a former Sun Microsystems engineer who began working on microdisplays in the midaughts. “He was able to unlock the tech that would need to exist for this to work,” says CEO Drew Perkins, who met and cofounded Mojo Vision with Deering in 2015. Mojo still has a ways to go: Internet connectivity, computing capabilities, and other components are currently housed off the lenses— issues that will need to be addressed before going to market. But the company’s leadership believes they’ve overcome the most difficult engineering hurdles. They’ve raised $108 million in funding from Google and Stanford, among others, and are currently in the FDA’S Breakthrough Devices Program, which offers a road map for development and eventual approval. Mojo hopes to deliver a product in two to three years, with capabilities such as text detection and magnification, aimed at people with low vision.