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DigiLens’ Plastic Waveguide Tech Could Make XR Glasses Lighter and Cheaper

From vrfocus.com

Whether you’re talking about virtual reality (VR) headsets or augmented reality (AR) glasses, everyone wants them to be smaller, lighter and cheaper to facilitate mainstream appeal. In its latest step on this journey, DigiLens has announced an extended partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) to help build and distribute its plastic waveguide technology.

DigiLens - Plastic and Glass_comparison

DigiLens and MCC have developed a proprietary plastic waveguide which they say “perform at nearly the same level as glass” whilst reducing the weight and manufacturing cost. The plastic solution will be made available to smartglasses OEMs via DigiLens’ licensed production partners, eventually making these kinds of devices far more cost-effective, and therefore attractive to consumers.

“DigiLens’ vision is to allow people to perceive the world in a way that brings them material and personal value through new experiences,” said Chris Pickett, CEO of DigiLens.  “Rather than trying to be the XR product you buy, we are instead looking to be in every XR product or experience you buy by licensing our technology and future improvements to qualified suppliers or to OEMs for direct incorporation into their own products. Plastic sells and, with a powerhouse like MCC on board, it allows us to deliver the very best, most affordable, safest and lightest waveguides on the market today.”

This announcement follows DigiLens’ recent Design v1 unveiling, a modular platform revealed in May. As part of its Visualize Framework, the DigiLens Design v1 features the Snapdragon XR2 Platform as well as DigiLens’ Crystal50 waveguides. Currently, DigiLens hasn’t said when its new plastic waveguide could be available for a device like the Design v1, or what those performance ratings may look like.

DigiLens Design v1
DigiLens Design v1. Image credit: DigiLens

“Plastic is an essential element for everyday life, and so critical to the ultimate success of waveguides and therefore XR glasses,” said Johei Takimoto, Managing Executive Officer of MCC. “Coupled with DigiLens’ leading waveguide technology and laser focus on accelerating the development of the smartglasses computing category across the entire ecosystem, we are putting our full attention and support to deliver on this key initiative. With plastic waveguides, the head-worn ecosystem can start designing for compelling ruggedized use cases, wrapped in a small and standalone form factor – we believe AR/XR glasses will be the next volume mobile device and we are very excited to be at the forefront of this new frontier.”

DigiLens isn’t the only company looking to lighten the load on your face whilst improving XR performance using plastic. Kopin unveiled its own all-plastic Pancake optics last month, doing away with heavy glass altogether. As further advancements in this field are made, VRFocus will keep you updated.

DigiLens Unveils New XR Smartglasses, the Snapdragon XR2 Powered Visualize Design v1

From vrfocus.com

Specialising in holographic waveguides for the past 18 years, DigiLens should know a thing or two about making smartglasses. Today, the company has announced its latest product, the Visualize Design v1, a modular pair of XR smartglasses due to arrive in early summer.

DigiLens Design v1

The first product from DigiLens’ Visualize Framework, the Design v1 integrates Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon XR2 Platform as well as DigiLens’ Crystal50 waveguides. These provide a waveguide efficiency of over 325 nits/lumen with 80% transparency, and a 50-degree (diagonal) field-of-view (FOV). DigiLens also claims the Crystal50 features “four-times less eye glow than the optics in HoloLens 2.” The hardware also features 6GB RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth, stereo speakers for spatial audio, an 8MP RGB camera, two cameras for 6DoF tracking, and multiple microphones for noise cancellation and user input.

While the Visualize Design v1 can be used as-is, just like Qualcomm’s XR1 AR Smart Viewer Reference Design the smartglasses are more of a springboard hardware platform to help developers, OEMs and IoT companies accelerate commercialisation. So the design is entirely modular, enabling partners to create smaller, more specialised form factors using the Visualize Framework. This also means as DigiLens refines its waveguides new ones can easily be attached to the platform.

“Design v1 is brighter, lighter and more capable than any other waveguide based XR device on the market. Our strategy is to empower the forward leaning XR companies in the ecosystem to capitalize on the strengths of an emerging horizontal market,” said Chris Pickett, CEO of DigiLens in a statement. “We are creating an XR blueprint for the ecosystem to take, add to and adapt as needed for their individual markets and their unique XR software development needs. Expanding the pool of ex­perts and democratizing ideas across the spectrum is what the market has missed to date.”

DigiLens Design v1

“Design v1 promises to be an excellent platform to offer our clients cost-effective headworn devices with greater comfort and more processing power, ideally adapted to their use case. We are looking forward to start leveraging the benefits of Design v1 for our XpertEye remote assistance solution and continue to create value and amazing experiences for our customers,” adds Christian Guillemot, CEO of AMA.

The DigiLens Visualise Design v1 has already started to ship to select partners with the wider rollout starting at the end of June 2021. For further updates on the latest XR smartglasses, keep reading VRFocus.