VIVA

VISION OPTICS WITH INTEGRATED VCSELS AND AUTOFOCAL LENSES

Eye-tracking is a key sensing technology for wearable glasses, required to enable applications ranging from gaze-contingent interaction to display-enhancement methods like foveated rendering, exit pupil steering, or HMI gesture-based control. For ergonomic reasons, wearable eye-tracking systems integrated in smartglasses must be compact, therefore one major constraint is the systems’ size and weight. In addition, the power consumption of such eye-tracking systems has an impact on ergonomics, not only due to the battery size required for a long operation time, but also due to the heat dissipation structure, which adds further weight to the overall design.

VIVA at a Glance:

VIVA focuses on the development of sensor technologies to enable a new class of camera-less eye-tracking systems, which will be light-weight (< 40 g), small, power efficient, fast (high sampling rate approx. 1 kHz), reliable and highly accurate under nearly all ambient conditions by first ever combining laser feedback interferometry (LFI) technology with meta optics. By doing so VIVA will develop a novel way of laser based eye-tracking solution that meets combined with glasses the sub 40 grams requirement for all day wearing comfort. The laser based eye-tracking 'Made in Europe' can overcome the limitations of the most common eye-tracking technologies based on video-based oculography (VOG) or electro-oculography (EOG). By completely waiving the usage of cameras the fundamental need for privacy protection on a personal and legal level will be assured.

The VIVA laser based approach leads to a breakthrough in the usage of all day wearables with eye-tracking in industrial and consumer related applications or Use Cases.

VIVA strongly contributes to the European societal goals and economic competitiveness in the area of digitized and intelligent microelectronics as well as photonics and micro-optics.