Forget smart glasses! This new prototype gives you superhero night vision

Smart glasses and augmented reality are fun, but what if you could see infrared light like a superhero? Thanks to a new prototype developed by scientists at the Beijing Institute of Technology, this is now a step closer to reality, PopSci reports.

New prototype allows humans to see infrared light

The prototype converts infrared light to shades of visible colors. | Image by Science Advances

A team of scientists from the Beijing Institute of Technology created a prototype of glasses that allows humans to see infrared light.

According to the researchers, this could be a "paradigm shift and a step towards surpassing our evolutionary biology."

The prototype uses specially designed particles called mercury telluride colloidal quantum dots. This material absorbs infrared light and then funnels it into a transparent OLED layer, built directly into the glasses.

The OLED layer takes the infrared light captured by the quantum dots and converts it into shades of red and cyan (yellow). This light then mixes with visible light that passes through the glasses to create a uniform picture, consisting of both visible and infrared light.

Would you buy and wear a pair of night vision glasses?

Huge implications for the human race

Night vision is just one of many useful applications of this new tech. | Image by All About Vision

The authors published a paper in the prestigious journal Science Advances and aren't shy or modest about their discovery.

Humans can't normally see infrared light because the photons at infrared wavelengths don't carry enough energy to trigger the light-sensing rods in our retinas. We only see a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, actually, between 380 and 750 nanometers (nm).

By surpassing the evolutionary boundaries of biological photoreception, this technology paves the way for next-generation visual prosthetics, high-fidelity augmented reality, molecularly sensitive substance identification, and robust navigation in degraded visual environments

- Multispectral infrared-to-full-color upconversion expanding human vision, Science Advances

Expanding this narrow band could have huge implications. The most obvious one is night vision. There are night vision goggles out there, but they only convert infrared light to a single color and don't offer the natural visible light mixed in.

The new prototype will let people see in the dark but offer a natural image our eyes and brains are accustomed to.

Furthermore, with these new goggles, people will be able to see hot and cold. No more accidental burns on the hot stove. These glasses could help professionals too, giving electricians an easy way to see heat buildup in circuits with bad wiring or soldering.

When will these infrared glasses launch?

The prototype looks rough around the edges at this point. | Image by Science Advances

Sadly, not in the coming months. This proof-of-concept prototype works, but it's far from comfortable or pretty. The design resembles 3D cinema glasses from the 1930s, and the glasses cover only one eye in their current state.

The 3D-printed plastic frame looks like a toy from a discount shop, and the overall styling is 1980s cyborg.

That said, these are design features that will most likely be easy to address. Scientists don't care about style when they test a prototype, and that's the reason why these glasses look the way they do.

Could Apple and Samsung glasses also get night vision?

Could the next Apple AR glasses use this tech? | Image by Shutterstock and Mr. Mikla

The next step in this project is to find funding for developing the infrared glasses into a viable commercial product. Could we see Apple, Samsung, or Google use this tech in their smart glasses and AR devices?

That's a possibility, for sure. But given the tech was developed in China, I think the first commercially available models will most likely come from Chinese brands as well. The regulations in the country are different when it comes to cutting-edge tech, and the researchers will most likely prefer to keep the tech local rather than selling the patent.

I can't wait to see what this extended light spectrum looks like in reality! What about you? Would you buy and wear such glasses?

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