I contacted Bosch in 2020 about buying BML500P retinal projectors in bulk, but they postponed the sale for several months because they were in talks with a major undisclosed customer about potentially exclusive rights to the patent. I never heard back.
"TDK demonstrates the world’s first direct retinal projection display for smart glasses using a meta-optic mirror". The qualifier is different. "using a meta-optic mirror" versus "using oscillating mirrors"
Don't forget the Sony DSC-HX99 retinal projection camera kit, built with QD Laser. They had a custom RETISSA NEOVIEWER commissioned for the camera to allow for low-vision users to leverage it for photography.
Sadly no longer available. I've seen through one and it was vividly clear and detailed without my glasses on at all and it felt so gamechanging to have that kind of display technology in my hands.
I wrote a short story years ago about a tech CEO going to trial over a similar technology that turned out to mass-blind people. Just food for thought I guess.
I have a quite badly displaced retina due to a detachment. I wonder if technology like this could be used in conjunction with mapping the distorted retina in order to obtain a correct perceived image.
Pretty much all my patents are being infringed at this point.
Lesson to anyone getting patents, they don’t matter unless you have $100M to fight Microsoft or oracle with. At that point might as well just keep your 100M and forget it
When you file a patent the patent attorneys tell you how critical it is to do so.
When someone infringes a patent, especially if you’re not commercializing your patent, the patent attorneys tell you, “wow, that looks really tough.”
It’s a big company game at this point, in general, or you’d need something that drives an immense amount of value before the patenting seems worth it, as far as I can tell.
Honestly, this would have pretty positive effects on costs of medicine, replacement parts for machinery, etc. It definitely hampers the regulatory capture moat that these companies build.
Most countries, including the Japan and the US, recognize a patent in another country for filing purposes. Which is to say, if you need to sue someone in Japan, yes you need a patent in Japan. However, you bring your US patent to the Japan Patent Office and they consider that as your file date and so you can sue for infringements that happen before your patent in Japan was issued.
If this is actually useful for you, of course, you need a patent lawyer in the specific country you're talking about, which is not cheap, and that's why the other posters said millions of dollars. Patents are not worth it for most people because you still have to pay lawyers to get anything out of them. You also pay for your time in court, acting as witness and testifying and watching court proceedings instead of doing your own business.
When I wanted to file a patent, the attorneys told me it was only good as my ability to enforce it, which really means how much money I have vs the other guy
Asteroids is classic, but for monochrome vector games I would vote for the tank-vs-tank game 'Battlezone', especially if they could do separate images per eye and allow for stereoscopic rendering.
Hopefully they add a color model so we can play Tempest.
That's the first thing i have searched the current blue screen have already caused enough damage to eyes. but ig it's still in early prototype and i would be appreciated if they provided the affects that it might causes to eyes.
That has been proven to be false, too. The blueness of the light doesn't matter, the brightness does. Any bright light might affect melatonin production and circadian rhythms.
Selling blue-light filter coatings is a big business, though.
"While light of any kind can suppress the secretion of melatonin, blue light at night does so more powerfully. Harvard researchers and their colleagues conducted an experiment comparing the effects of 6.5 hours of exposure to blue light to exposure to green light of comparable brightness. The blue light suppressed melatonin for about twice as long as the green light and shifted circadian rhythms by twice as much (3 hours vs. 1.5 hours)." https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/b...
"Evening residential illumination possesses the capacity to impair sleep quality via the suppression of endogenous melatonin production, a process largely driven by short-wavelength (blue) light." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-29882-7
"Blue light waves come from fluorescent and LED lights and back-lit electronic screens on televisions, computers, tablets, and cell phones. Remember, exposure to these lighted screens during the sensitive period can make it difficult for you to fall asleep at night or can wake you up too early" https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/work-hour-training-for-nurses/long...
"Blue light had stronger suppression effects, particularly in younger participants and men. These results underscore blue light’s disruptive effects on circadian health and highlight red light as a less disruptive alternative for nighttime environments." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12113466/
Light being from a laser does not automatically make it more dangerous. You can even shine a regular class IIIa laser pointer, with warning label still intact, directly into your eye and you'll blink long before it will do any damage.
The issue is intensity of light. These retinal projector lasers are not intense enough to damage your eye. A regular light at the same intensity as a powerful laser would damage your eyes just as much. It's just a lot harder to create a regular light that can reach that level of intensity.
played with one of these 'retinal displays' back in the late 90s at the university of washington. Pretty crazy stuff, apparently some guy with massive cornea damage was able to see the retinal projection clearly. At the time it was just monochrome and fairly low resolution (by todays standards) but very exciting.
TLDR: They demoed a direct retinal projection display with a thin, transparent mirror embedded in the lens, enabling glasses that look more like everyday eyewear while reducing costs compared with waveguide-based designs.
This picture (with English text) has a bit of the detail showing their reflector structure, which is also in one of the pictures of your Japanese page:
I first read about direct retinal projection displays (using oscillating mirrors no less) in Mondo 2000 [^1]
Hard to find much on the "Private Eye" hardware as I guess Reflection Technology (the manufacturer) went outta business in the mid 90's
But a 700x280 display painted onto your retina that looked like a full-ish size display hovering in space nonetheless, and downright epic for 1989
[^1]: https://microship.com/winnelife-interview-with-steve-roberts...
For the curious, a bit more info and some pics on these sites
https://glassdevelopment.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/hmd-histor...
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/reflection-technolog...
* https://letinar.com/en/pintilt
I appreciate your comment on the history.
I interviewed Dan Bricklin in '88 or '89 (for a magazine). Trippy dude. Lots of ideas.
Bricklin stated the optic nerve is exposed brain. So that when a laser projects an imagine directly on to the retina, it's like programming the brain.
Nope.
I decided right then and there I never needed a laser pointing at my eye ball.
Sadly no longer available. I've seen through one and it was vividly clear and detailed without my glasses on at all and it felt so gamechanging to have that kind of display technology in my hands.
https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/compact-cameras/all-vlo...
It's now transformed though, into the RETISSA VIEWCLEAR for your phone - https://retissa-vc.qdlaser.com/en/
Comment above points to interesting Japanese device too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49977339
https://kemendo.com/pdfs/USPatent10757400.pdf
Pretty much all my patents are being infringed at this point.
Lesson to anyone getting patents, they don’t matter unless you have $100M to fight Microsoft or oracle with. At that point might as well just keep your 100M and forget it
When someone infringes a patent, especially if you’re not commercializing your patent, the patent attorneys tell you, “wow, that looks really tough.”
It’s a big company game at this point, in general, or you’d need something that drives an immense amount of value before the patenting seems worth it, as far as I can tell.
Or just outright sell the patents to a competing big company and let them duke it out. Now at least you end up with some money.
So, funny you say that. You know those AI companies that seem to have really good training data...
If this is actually useful for you, of course, you need a patent lawyer in the specific country you're talking about, which is not cheap, and that's why the other posters said millions of dollars. Patents are not worth it for most people because you still have to pay lawyers to get anything out of them. You also pay for your time in court, acting as witness and testifying and watching court proceedings instead of doing your own business.
I would love monochromatic vector(not raster) HUD in my glasses. I could play the original Asteroids. Bah, bah, bah bah. Pew, pew!
Hopefully they add a color model so we can play Tempest.
Selling blue-light filter coatings is a big business, though.
by who?
"While light of any kind can suppress the secretion of melatonin, blue light at night does so more powerfully. Harvard researchers and their colleagues conducted an experiment comparing the effects of 6.5 hours of exposure to blue light to exposure to green light of comparable brightness. The blue light suppressed melatonin for about twice as long as the green light and shifted circadian rhythms by twice as much (3 hours vs. 1.5 hours)." https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthy-aging-and-longevity/b...
"Evening residential illumination possesses the capacity to impair sleep quality via the suppression of endogenous melatonin production, a process largely driven by short-wavelength (blue) light." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-29882-7
"Blue light waves come from fluorescent and LED lights and back-lit electronic screens on televisions, computers, tablets, and cell phones. Remember, exposure to these lighted screens during the sensitive period can make it difficult for you to fall asleep at night or can wake you up too early" https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/work-hour-training-for-nurses/long...
"Blue light had stronger suppression effects, particularly in younger participants and men. These results underscore blue light’s disruptive effects on circadian health and highlight red light as a less disruptive alternative for nighttime environments." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12113466/
The issue is intensity of light. These retinal projector lasers are not intense enough to damage your eye. A regular light at the same intensity as a powerful laser would damage your eyes just as much. It's just a lot harder to create a regular light that can reach that level of intensity.
This Japanese article has a few more details: https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/2145266.html
https://www.tdk.com/system/files/featured_stories/features-o...