Samsung Have Patented An Augmented Reality Contact Lens

Previous attempts at portable AR devices have met with lukewarm responses, with many of them, including Google Glass, falling short of what was expected of them upon conception. Now Samsung may be working on the best ubiquitous AR technology yet that may finally be able to be a hit with consumers.

According to a patent discovered by the blog Sammobile, the Korean firm appears to be working on a brand new technology, “smart” contact lenses, which would able to display overlaid images right on the eye and take pictures with a simple gesture like a blink. Of course, the technology to compute all of these factors isn’t yet compact enough that they could be comfortably fitted to a contact lens, requiring a smartphone connected wirelessly to do the heavy lifting.

The patent has been a long time behind the scenes, with the original filming having taken place in September 2014, with it only recently being published. The majority of the patent is in Korean, however, the filing does include a number of diagrams that show off some early concepts of how the lens may work.

Of course, a patent gives no assurance that the product will ever be realized and is often used to ensure that other companies do not take the idea. It isn’t even shown in the paper whether the patent was accepted. Whether we will see this product from Samsung any time soon is a total unknown, but it is exciting to think that they believe this technology is possible and what could become a product capable of shaping our future.