When you check out the Lumus Z-30 Optical Engine for augmented actuality glasses, it seems to be just about like an unusual pair of glasses.
It’s light-weight, but it options an AR display screen based mostly on the Z-Lens 2D waveguide structure with a small 30-degree discipline of view. This permits it to suit seamlessly inside normal glasses sizes, providing main useful and aesthetic advantages. They’re a step down from the extra highly effective Z-50, however they serve the aim of becoming inside an unusual pair of glasses. This progress is an instance of how the tech is shifting ahead to one thing sensible for mainstream makes use of.
Israel-based Lumus confirmed off the AR glasses, with Schott glass, on the SPIE Photonics West 2025 occasion in San Francisco final week. I put them on. The glasses have been tremendous gentle and the colours on the display screen have been fairly vibrant. David Goldman, vice chairman of selling at Lumus, mentioned in an interview with GamesBeat that it combines each brightness and vitality effectivity.
I wrote about Lumus some years in the past in an age when AR was hyped however didn’t stay as much as its expectations. However the tech has made some headway since then, Goldman mentioned. Lumus has been out there for 14 years. The Maximus got here out about 5 years in the past.
“You saw the Maximus before. At the time, this was considered small. But it was still pretty heavy. Then we went to the Z-50. This is 50 degrees. You can see the reduction in the geometry and the weight,” Goldman mentioned.
On the AR lenses, the field with AR imagery might be moved round to totally different locations on the glasses. If you wish to put a field translating language in real-time on the lenses, then that may possible go decrease on the lenses. A producer doing conventional AI can put the field with AR pictures within the middle, Goldman mentioned.
With Z-30, necessary efficiency facets of AR glasses are optimized to enhance the person expertise. For instance, glasses that function an built-in Z-30 optical engine would require decrease processing necessities and fewer highly effective {hardware} due to having fewer pixels to render, which makes them extra reasonably priced to supply. Plus, gadgets with a mid-sized field-of-view function extra effectively, making a smoother visible expertise and lengthening battery life –making them extra suitable for long-term client use.
Z-30 is light-weight, measuring in at 14.5 grams, providing full shade, 720 x 720 pixels decision, and a brightness of >3,000 nits/Watt. With a 50% discount in weight and quantity in comparison with the Z-50, it allows the creation of even smaller kind components for AR glasses, which has been a crucial barrier to entry.
Lumus Z-30 is trying fairly skinny.
The Z-30 optical engine integrates Lumus’ Z-Lens waveguide structure, which provides good picture high quality and permits for smaller projector designs. It additionally allows versatile positioning of the eye-box, lowered world ghost results, and the likelihood for direct bonding of Rx lenses or protecting plastic parts. Extra advantages of the Z-Lens waveguide structure embody compatibility with microLED projectors, enabling even slimmer and extra energy environment friendly design choices.
Far brighter than different options, Lumus is the one waveguide ideally fitted to out of doors utilization. With as much as 10 instances higher luminance effectivity over competing waveguides and provide chain companions like Quanta Laptop Inc. and Schott, Lumus desires to be the main selection for OEMs making AR glasses, Goldman mentioned.
Schott’s glass manufacturing unit
Lumus waveguide know-how supplies unparalleled shade uniformity and a real white because of the straight-forward gentle path inherent in its structure.
Different key benefits: a smaller micro-projector, a big discipline of view, and a distortion-free view of the actual world. Battery effectivity is as much as 10 instances better than another waveguide available on the market, and ahead gentle leakage (ahead projection) is inherently negligible, Goldman mentioned.
Lumus’ manufacturing processes supported by its massive provide chain companions, together with Quanta Laptop Inc. and Schott, allow scalability for mass manufacturing. The corporate is the main designer of geometric waveguide know-how on the core of a number of present AR merchandise, together with Thales’ Scorpion full-color head-mounted show, Augmedics xVision system for guiding surgeons, Lenovo’s ThinkReality A6 launched in 2019 in addition to MediThinQ’s ScopeEye and MetaScope.
Lumus makes the optical engine for the glasses, and you may count on client gadgets based mostly on such tech popping out inside a few years. The corporate has tech with fields of view unfold between 30 levels to 50 levels to 70 levels, which allows it to cowl every little thing from an emphasis on look to an emphasis on efficiency.
It makes use of a useful optical engine with the corporate’s geometric or reflective wave information, coupled along with a micro projector. It has a carbon-based body for client glasses. Goldman confirmed me that it’s fairly straightforward to learn textual content on a white background once you have a look at the AR display screen on the glasses. Pores and skin shade confirmed up precisely within the pictures.
“Now we’re showing the 30 degrees field of view,” Goldman mentioned. “Now we’re going to have samples. We’re showing the 30-degree solution because customers are asking for a more near-term solution. This isn’t as power hungry as 50 degrees, but it’s still useful for some consumer applications. And it gives more options when it comes to the aesthetic.”
With this number of applied sciences, glasses makers can come to Lumus with totally different requests for customized designs. The corporate can even add prescriptions to its lenses, immediately bonding the prescription to the glasses. The leakage on the waveguide is lower than 1%.
Common glasses vary in weight from 10 grams to 40 grams. Goldman mentioned 10 grams for AR glasses isn’t doable now. However 40 grams is likely to be doable with extra advances and a deal with AR in only one eye. As for including AI, it can make the glasses heavier, however it may work with thinner waveguides sooner or later.
Teaming up with glass makers
Colin Schmucker, a biz dev man at Schott, in an interview at CES 2025.
Quanta Laptop and Schott are offering the glass within the mass manufacturing of the wave guides.
Colin Schmucker, enterprise improvement supervisor at Schott, mentioned in an interview that his firm is AR/VR merchandise as a brand new avenue for its high-quality glass. The corporate makes a speciality of making glass with a one millimeter bending radius — enabling a extremely skinny piece of glass. It makes use of these in semiconductors for foldable shows. It makes use of them to make holographic lens purposes. And it additionally makes waveguide lenses for AR glasses.
At a newly constructed manufacturing unit in Malaysia, Schott produces its lenses with reflective waveguide know-how. It’s shifting into high-volume manufacturing and has a partnership with Lumus to make the Z lens framework of reflective waveguides.
Schott is crafting the glass for AR glasses.
“We supply the base substrate that can receive the grading, basically the high refractive index, allowing for a higher field of view,” Schmucker mentioned. “It enables you to have a much more interactive display with more information. At the same time, if you look at the value proposition of your diffractive gradings versus reflective versus holographic, we’re addressing the other technologies with the high refractive index wafers.”
To get to super-thin glasses with high-quality AR lenses, Schmucker mentioned it requires glorious waveguide know-how with an optical high quality degree that doesn’t detract from actuality. You get excessive transparency and the suitable discipline of view together with higher dimension and weight. And also you want higher and higher batteries to energy the projection system.
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