Seeing with both eyes carries an advantage: the ability to judge distance in 3D. Think, for example, of the space between a dinner plate on the table and the salt shaker, or between the front of a car and the bumper of the vehicle ahead.
People who have lost sight in one eye can still see with the other, but they lack binocular depth perception. Some of them could benefit from augmented reality glasses being developed at Yamanashi University in Japan, which artificially create a sense of depth in the person's healthy eye.
How AR glasses restore depth perception
A team led by Xiaoyang Mao started with a commercially available pair of 3D glasses, the Wrap 920AR. It looks like an ordinary pair of tinted glasses, but small cameras protrude from each lens. The lenses are transparent, and the device both captures and projects images.
The Yamanashi team has developed software that uses dual cameras. When a person puts the glasses on, each camera captures the scene as each eye would see it. The images are fed into computer software that combines the viewpoint of both cameras and creates a "defocus" effect. This means that some objects remain in focus while others are out of focus, producing a sense of depth. This version of the scene in front of the wearer is then projected into the wearer's healthy eye.
Read more about the glasses here.
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