Presbyopia (long sightedness) appears for 100% of the global population and usually around the age of 40.
Half of the world’s population could be short-sighted by 2050. In 2010, 28% of the global population suffered from short-sightedness, also known as myopia and today 34% struggles with seeing distances. The increase in myopia cases is due to many people spending many hours in front of a screen.
Most people who with vision problems choose spectacles as the solution, but ordinary high power prescription lenses are thick, heavy, uncomfortable to wear, and unaesthetic.
Based on the results achieved in the ODYSSEY project we have launched a Danish university spinout company, ABH Optics ApS.
The company has the ambition to introduce the worlds lightest prescription eyeglass lenses laser printed in the shop to the market as soon as the development of the minimum viable product is completed. The prescription eyeglasses lenses will be laser printed in the novel smart coating in the surface of the lens substrates. The lens substrates with the smart surface are well suited for mass production since they are all alike. The customization of the lenses to the customers prescription is done in the final manufacturing step with the laser. Our ambition is that this will be done in 20 minutes in the optician shop.
The lenses from ABH Optics are only 1 mm thick and the thin lenses solves many of the issues that people who need strong eyeglass lenses have. They are lighter, more comfortable, has a more natural look and allows you to choose freely among the frames you like.
The technology partners in the ODYSSEY project Nanotypos OE from Greece, Optileks AB from Sweden, and the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, developed the meta surface technology in collaboration and demonstrated that the technology can used to manufacture high power prescription eyeglass lenses where the lens is laser written in the smart surface coating. The IP developed in the ODYSSEY project can be used for a range of application other than prescription eyeglass lenses.
DTU continued their development of the laser printing technology developed in the FET OPEN project CHROMAVISION and the FET Innovation Launchpad project DeLight. In the ODYSSEY project DTU’s focus was on printing prescription eyeglass lenses and led to DTU applying for new patents. DTU demonstrated single power lenses with dioptres up to 15 and lenses with correction for astigmatism.
