Sony will be highlighting their OLED displays in a much smaller form factor than the giant 4K HDTV displays that will be common at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). A 640 by 400 OLED display will be found on the SmartEyeglass Attach! (Fig. 1). This is a concept model as a lot of cool stuff at CES will be but it highlights Sony’s technology.
The model is designed to clip on to a set of eye glasses which makes it handy for those that already wear them. The detachable nature lets someone use the SmartEyeglass Attach! when desired. The unit weighs in at 44 g. It is not quite balanced. The display side is 22 g and the other is 18 g.
Like Google Glass (see “A View Of Google Glass”), the SmartEyeglass uses a transparent optical unit to place the image in front of the eye (Fig. 2). The OLED display is inside the system attached to the optical unit. It has an effective display size of 40.6 cm (16-in) at 2 m.
The pair of bulges on either side contains the electronics and the battery. The former includes the processor, sensor hub, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. The system is designed to work with a smartphone like Google Glass.
Part of the design challenge was the OLED display. The new version (Fig. 3) reduces the size of the OLED device by 38% using a more compact pixel arrangement. It has reduced the size as well as improving the aperture ratio. The OLED display provides a bright image even in sunlight. The new panel is only 10.2 mm by 7.9 mm.
Wearable technology (see “Wearing Your Technology”) like SmartEyeglass Attach! has many obvious uses but Sony is looking for developers to come up with new uses. Sony is also provide a software development kit (SDK) for the SmartEyeglass Attach!
Sony is actually targeting availability of the product in 2015. I can add it to my holiday tech picks (see “Real Techie Holiday Picks From Lab Bench”) for next year.
