Real World AR

Today I would like to forget about all the hype and glamor near eye products to have fun in a virtual world. Instead I’m going to talk a near eye device aimed at helping people to see and live in the real world.  The product is called the “seeBoost®” and it is made by the startup Evergaze in Richardson, Texas. I happen to know the founder and CEO Pat Antaki from working together on a near eye display back in 1998, long before it was fashionable. I’ve watched Pat bootstrap this company from its earliest days and asked him if I could be the first to write about seeBoost on my blog.

The Problem

Imagine you get Age Related Macular Degeration (AMD) or Diabetic Retinopathy. All your high-resolution vision and best color vision of the macular (and where high resolution fovea resides) is gone and you see something like the picture on the right. All you can use is your peripheral vision which is low in resolution, contrast, and color sensitivity. There are over 2 million people in the U.S that can still see but have worse than 20/60 vision in their better eye.

What would you pay to be able to read a book again and do other normal activities that require the ability to have “functional vision?” So not only is Evergaze aiming to help a large number of people, they are going after a sizable and growing market.

seeBoost Overview

seeBoost has 3 key parts, the lightweight near-to-eye display, a camera with high speed autofocus, and proprietary processing in an ASIC that remaps what the camera sees onto the functioning part of the user’s vision. They put the proprietary algorithms in hardware so they could have the image remapping and contrast enhancement performed with extremely low latency so that there is no perceptible delay when a person moves their head. As anyone that has used VR headsets will know, this important for wearing the device for long periods of time to avoid headaches and nausea.

A perhaps subtle but important point is that the camera and display are perfectly coaxial, so there is no parallax error as you move the object closer to your eye. The importance of centering the camera with the user’s eye for long term comfort was a major point made AR headset user and advocate Steve Mann in his March 2013, IEEE Spectrum article, “What I’ve learned from 35 years of wearing computerized eyewear”. Quoting from the article, “The slight misalignment seemed unimportant at the time, but it produced some strange and unpleasant result.” And in commenting on Google Glass Mr. Mann said, “The current prototypes of Google Glass position the camera well to the right side of the wearer’s right eye. Were that system to overlay live video imagery from the camera on top of the user’s view, the very same problems would surely crop up.”

Unlike traditional magnifying optics like a magnifying glass, in addition to being able to remap the camera image to the parts of the eye that can see, the depth of field and magnification amount are decoupled: you can get any magnification (from 1x to 8x) at any distance (2 inches to infinity). It also has digital image color reversal (black-to-white reversal, useful for reading pages with a lot of white). The device is very lightweight at 0.9 oz. including cable. The battery pack supports for 6 hours of continual use on a single charge.

Use Case

Imagine this use scenario: playing bridge with your friends. To look at the cards in your hand you may need 2x mag at 12 inches’ distance. The autofocus allows you to merely move the cards as close to your face as you like, the way a person would naturally use to make something larger. Having the camera coaxial with the display makes this all seem natural versus say having a camera above the eye. Looking at the table to see what cards are placed there, maybe you need 6x mag. at 2 feet. To see other people’s eyes and facial expressions around the table, you need 1-2x at 3-4 feet.

seeBoost is designed to help people see so they can better take part in the simple joys of normal life. The lightweight design mounts on top of a user’s prescription glasses and can help while walking, reading signs and literature, shopping, watching television, recognizing faces, cooking, and even playing sports like golf.

Another major design consideration was the narrow design so that it does not cover-up lateral and downwards peripheral vision of the eye.  This turns out to be important for people who don’t want to further lose peripheral vision. In this application, monocular(single eye) is for better situational awareness and peripheral vision.

seeBoost is a vision enhancement device rather it essentially a computer (or cell phone) monitor that you must plug into something. The user simply looks at the screen (through seeBoost), as seeBoost improves their vision for whatever they’re looking at, be it an electronic display or their grandchildren’s faces.

Assembled in the USA and Starting to Ship

This is not just some Kickstarter concept either. Evergaze has been testing prototypes with vision impaired patients for over a year and have already finished a number of studies. What’s more they recently started shipping product. To the left is an image that was taken though the seeBoost camera via its display and optics.

What’s more this product is manufactured in the US at a production line Evergaze set up in Richardson, TX. If you want to find out more about the company you can go their their YouTube Channel or if you know someone that needs a seeBoost, you can contact Pat Antaki via email: pantaki@evergaze.com