A smart contact lens can encompass various functionalities, and we perceive it as the primary digital hub in your life, taking on the role currently held by a smartphone in most cases. However, it offers a wide range of features specific to contact lenses. Let's explore the full scope of these features and consider how a fully developed and advanced device like this can enhance your vision. In this discussion, our focus is primarily on features that enhance the imaging capabilities of your own eyes, rather than relying on external content such as geo and mapping data, messaging, or other integrations.

1. Night vision – This ranges from the intense infrared vision seen in action movies to providing gentle assistance in low-light conditions. While users with night blindness will find this particularly useful, there is a broader market for this feature, as twilight conditions are challenging for anyone, especially when driving or cycling.
2. Vision correction – Although vision correction remains an essential feature, a smart lens can offer more flexibility and responsiveness. Similar to bifocal glasses accommodating two use-cases, the lens can adapt its specifications based on the user's needs, time of day, eye fatigue, and other factors at play.
3. Enhanced imaging – A smart contact lens can dynamically adjust to provide the optimal image 'mode' for the user, sharpening contrast, reducing glare, and adjusting colour saturation. This feature can be applicable to driving, cycling, sports, and addressing special needs such as colour blindness. The modes can activate automatically or on-demand, based on the user's profile, surroundings, and activity.
4. Zoom – A smart contact lens enables zooming in and out as necessary, or switching to a 'macro' mode to obtain a better view of distant or small objects. The manipulation of light using innovative 2D materials opens up previously unimaginable possibilities. This feature has both professional and personal applications.
5. Third-party view – A smart lens allows you to see through someone else's eyes, whether it's a teammate, a drone, or any other camera accessible to you. This capability can be highly valuable in critical situations where additional visual information is invaluable. We envision applications in areas such as search and rescue, sports, civil engineering, aviation, transportation, and many others.

These are five ways in which a smart contact lens can evolve beyond the contact lenses you are familiar with, all centered around enhancing the images you perceive from the world around you. The combination of 2D materials that enable unique interactions with light, along with the capabilities of digital imaging, computing, and AI, unlocks a range of possibilities for the smart contact lens as a vision enhancement device. We are determined to fully utilize these opportunities. Stay tuned for more updates.

A smart contact lens can encompass various functionalities, and we perceive it as the primary digital hub in your life, taking on the role currently held by a smartphone in most cases. However, it offers a wide range of features specific to contact lenses. Let's explore the full scope of these features and consider how a fully developed and advanced device like this can enhance your vision. In this discussion, our focus is primarily on features that enhance the imaging capabilities of your own eyes, rather than relying on external content such as geo and mapping data, messaging, or other integrations.
<ol>
<li>Night vision – This ranges from the intense infrared vision seen in action movies to providing gentle assistance in low-light conditions. While users with night blindness will find this particularly useful, there is a broader market for this feature, as twilight conditions are challenging for anyone, especially when driving or cycling.</li>
<li>Vision correction – Although vision correction remains an essential feature, a smart lens can offer more flexibility and responsiveness. Similar to bifocal glasses accommodating two use-cases, the lens can adapt its specifications based on the user's needs, time of day, eye fatigue, and other factors at play.</li>
<li>Enhanced imaging – A smart contact lens can dynamically adjust to provide the optimal image 'mode' for the user, sharpening contrast, reducing glare, and adjusting colour saturation. This feature can be applicable to driving, cycling, sports, and addressing special needs such as colour blindness. The modes can activate automatically or on-demand, based on the user's profile, surroundings, and activity.</li>
<li>Zoom – A smart contact lens enables zooming in and out as necessary, or switching to a 'macro' mode to obtain a better view of distant or small objects. The manipulation of light using innovative 2D materials opens up previously unimaginable possibilities. This feature has both professional and personal applications.</li>
<li>Third-party view – A smart lens allows you to see through someone else's eyes, whether it's a teammate, a drone, or any other camera accessible to you. This capability can be highly valuable in critical situations where additional visual information is invaluable. We envision applications in areas such as search and rescue, sports, civil engineering, aviation, transportation, and many others.</li>
</ol>
These are five ways in which a smart contact lens can evolve beyond the contact lenses you are familiar with, all centered around enhancing the images you perceive from the world around you. The combination of 2D materials that enable unique interactions with light, along with the capabilities of digital imaging, computing, and AI, unlocks a range of possibilities for the smart contact lens as a vision enhancement device. We are determined to fully utilize these opportunities. Stay tuned for more updates.

Enhanced vision

The future of computing will be determined by the new materials more than anything else. Novel materials are key to unlocking further progress in semiconductor miniaturization, performance, and energy efficiency. This is why XPANCEO as a company has staffed its R&D department with world-leading talent in 2D materials. Why do we find new materials so essential to the task of building the next generation of personal computing devices? The answer is more complex than you may expect.

Have you ever noticed how one of the most common ways to categorize the stages of human civilization is based on the prevailing material: stone age, bronze age, or iron age? And while you’re pondering that, ask yourself: what age are we in? As our technology becomes more complicated multiple legitimate answers to this question emerge: metals still play a huge role, but so do synthetic materials. And then there is silicon, of course. If you ask me to pick one material to name the current ‘age’, I would say ‘silicon’ but also immediately add that a new era is about to dawn.

There was a good reason Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov received the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their groundbreaking research on graphene. It was a glimpse into the future; the first of many materials that we’ve come to call ‘2D’ or ‘single-layer’ materials. They have one definitive property: their atomic lattices are exactly that — single layers. The atoms are still bound together in two dimensions, however, the forces that were previously ‘busy’ binding the crystal in the 3rd dimension are now free and give these materials a whole range of radically new properties that you don’t see in any of their ‘normal’ equivalents. And these properties are truly fascinating.

Let’s consider the product we are working on — a personal computer embedded in a contact lens — and see how 2D materials are critical to building it.

1. If we want to pack all the necessary components into a lens we are going to need levels of miniaturization that traditional material simply cannot offer. 2D materials are not just ‘thinner’ — they allow us to create waveguides and other optical components that defy the most important limitation — the diffraction limit. For that reason, they can be made smaller than half the wavelength of visible light. We are talking about nanometers here.
2. Next are electrodes and antennae. Traditional conductors are not going to work in a device like a lens — we want them to be both flexible and transparent. Working with 2D materials, we have developed a method for making metallic films that both are transparent and can successfully replace metals in electronics. We can have gold or copper wiring in the lens that would not obstruct the view.
3. Most importantly, we are now in a phase of assembling a toolbox for the future: the whole semiconductor segment can be reimagined based on 2D materials. Moreover, we can build photonic devices that can match the scale of electronic semiconductors and shift the whole industry towards photonics.
4. Finally, and this is very important for our vision of how personal devices are going to evolve: 2D materials open new possibilities for sensorics, bio-compatibility, and overall better human-machine integration (which is a whole separate subject).
While building a lens that would be actually wearable and functional requires 2D materials, the lens is just one example of the transformation the industry will have to undergo in order to evolve to the next stage. And maybe this new age won’t be referred to by its key material, but it would nevertheless be strongly dependent on some of them.

The future of computing will be determined by the new materials more than anything else. Novel materials are key to unlocking further progress in semiconductor miniaturization, performance, and energy efficiency. This is why XPANCEO as a company has staffed its R&amp;D department with world-leading talent in 2D materials. Why do we find new materials so essential to the task of building the next generation of personal computing devices? The answer is more complex than you may expect.
Have you ever noticed how one of the most common ways to categorize the stages of human civilization is based on the prevailing material: stone age, bronze age, or iron age? And while you’re pondering that, ask yourself: what age are we in? As our technology becomes more complicated multiple legitimate answers to this question emerge: metals still play a huge role, but so do synthetic materials. And then there is silicon, of course. If you ask me to pick one material to name the current ‘age’, I would say ‘silicon’ but also immediately add that a new era is about to dawn.
There was a good reason Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov received the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their groundbreaking research on graphene. It was a glimpse into the future; the first of many materials that we’ve come to call ‘2D’ or ‘single-layer’ materials. They have one definitive property: their atomic lattices are exactly that — single layers. The atoms are still bound together in two dimensions, however, the forces that were previously ‘busy’ binding the crystal in the 3rd dimension are now free and give these materials a whole range of radically new properties that you don’t see in any of their ‘normal’ equivalents. And these properties are truly fascinating.
Let’s consider the product we are working on — a personal computer embedded in a contact lens — and see how 2D materials are critical to building it.
<ol>
<li>If we want to pack all the necessary components into a lens we are going to need levels of miniaturization that traditional material simply cannot offer. 2D materials are not just ‘thinner’ — they allow us to create waveguides and other optical components that defy the most important limitation — the diffraction limit. For that reason, they can be made smaller than half the wavelength of visible light. We are talking about nanometers here.</li>
<li>Next are electrodes and antennae. Traditional conductors are not going to work in a device like a lens — we want them to be both flexible and transparent. Working with 2D materials, we have developed a method for making metallic films that both are transparent and can successfully replace metals in electronics. We can have gold or copper wiring in the lens that would not obstruct the view.</li>
<li>Most importantly, we are now in a phase of assembling a toolbox for the future: the whole semiconductor segment can be reimagined based on 2D materials. Moreover, we can build photonic devices that can match the scale of electronic semiconductors and shift the whole industry towards photonics.</li>
<li>Finally, and this is very important for our vision of how personal devices are going to evolve: 2D materials open new possibilities for sensorics, bio-compatibility, and overall better human-machine integration (which is a whole separate subject).</li>
</ol>
While building a lens that would be actually wearable and functional requires 2D materials, the lens is just one example of the transformation the industry will have to undergo in order to evolve to the next stage. And maybe this new age won’t be referred to by its key material, but it would nevertheless be strongly dependent on some of them.

The role of 2D materials in creating a smart lens

XR (extended reality) has the potential to revolutionize education, but the most significant shift is not expected to occur in schools or universities. To understand why and where XR will have the most significant impact, we need to differentiate between learning as a cognitive process and education as a system.

While immersive tours of ancient Rome or interactive 3D models of the solar system, molecules, or frogs are amazing tools for primary and secondary education, they don't solve the problems faced by the education system, such as funding, safety, equality, and curriculum.

AR and VR applications in education can make a big impact on vocational training by accelerating the learning process, delivering smart contact lenses that blur the lines between training, apprenticeship, and doing the job, making professional certifications fully digital, and increasing workforce mobility by accelerating and streamlining training, re-training, and certification.

In conclusion, while XR has the potential to revolutionize education, its biggest impact is expected to be in vocational training for specific jobs and on-the-job training, primarily blue-collar. Despite being less "photogenic" than other education applications, XR can make a significant impact by delivering accelerated and streamlined training, re-training, and certification, thereby increasing workforce mobility and benefiting both employers and employees.

XR (extended reality) has the potential to revolutionize education, but the most significant shift is not expected to occur in schools or universities. To understand why and where XR will have the most significant impact, we need to differentiate between learning as a cognitive process and education as a system.
While immersive tours of ancient Rome or interactive 3D models of the solar system, molecules, or frogs are amazing tools for primary and secondary education, they don&#39;t solve the problems faced by the education system, such as funding, safety, equality, and curriculum.
AR and VR applications in education can make a big impact on vocational training by accelerating the learning process, delivering smart contact lenses that blur the lines between training, apprenticeship, and doing the job, making professional certifications fully digital, and increasing workforce mobility by accelerating and streamlining training, re-training, and certification.
In conclusion, while XR has the potential to revolutionize education, its biggest impact is expected to be in vocational training for specific jobs and on-the-job training, primarily blue-collar. Despite being less &quot;photogenic&quot; than other education applications, XR can make a significant impact by delivering accelerated and streamlined training, re-training, and certification, thereby increasing workforce mobility and benefiting both employers and employees.

The Real XR Revolution in Education (is not what you think)

It is not accidental that XPANCEO’s mission is phrased in the most ambitious way possible from day one. We’re not merely developing a new product, not even creating a new product category, we are working on the next generation of personal computing. We believe this is the best way to make sure we keep the eye on the prize and make the right choices while making a new product for the new category, which will become the next big thing in personal tech.

Here are some core principles that XPANCEO is founded on and how they apply to reality:

1. Science matters. We believe science is the ultimate source of answers to questions and challenges we have in front of us. When we doubt if something is even doable we don’t look to the market or the industry, we ask what is the science behind it. This is why we are proud to be home to some of the world’s top researchers in fields like 2D materials and photonics. Their ideas allowed us to look past the status quo in the industry and see opportunities to explore.
2. New materials define the next step in the technological revolution. There is no shortage of visionary versions of the future technology. We believe that one thing that sets truly potent ideas apart from mechanical extrapolaitions of today’s technology and pure fantasy is acknowledgement of the role new materials are going to play in enabling this future. One of the key answers we have from our science team is that computer components can only really make a leap forward if we leave behind our assumptions about the materials that are typically used in electronics and turn our attention to the emerging class of 2D materials.
3. Great products are born out of the right combination of form-factor and use case. This is one of the key guiding principles in our work. We believe that any success story in tech can be boiled down to a combination of the right form-factor and a ubiquitous use case (and on the contrary big flops can usually be explained via these two not lining up right). This is the key principle in defining the parameters of the product we are building and its feature set.
4. Transparency and agility. Existing at the crossing of advanced scientific research and product development we apply the strong sides of both cultures to our ways of working. Peer review and data-driven decision-making, combined with an iterative, agile approach to defining priorities and next steps, help us move fast and achieve results.
5. Radical honesty. Working with a brilliant on a revolutionary product is a high-stakes game and we believe it is of utmost importance to keep communication within the team as straightforward and open as possible. It extends to all aspects of our life at XPANCEO: from shared understanding of the mission and the product roadmap to simple day-to-day team interactions. Trust in the idea, trus in each other’s expertise and trust leadership go hand in hand.

Everything we do is guided by these simple principles, from the core idea to build a smart contact lens as the primary personal gadget, to the choice of technology to make it possible, to organizing the workflow, to making decisions about design and user experience. We know what the end product should look like and be capable of and we know the main parameters of the path that can lead us to this result – all thanks to these simple organizing principles behind our company.

It is not accidental that XPANCEO’s mission is phrased in the most ambitious way possible from day one. We’re not merely developing a new product, not even creating a new product category, we are working on the next generation of personal computing. We believe this is the best way to make sure we keep the eye on the prize and make the right choices while making a new product for the new category, which will become the next big thing in personal tech.
Here are some core principles that XPANCEO is founded on and how they apply to reality:
<ol>
<li>Science matters. We believe science is the ultimate source of answers to questions and challenges we have in front of us. When we doubt if something is even doable we don’t look to the market or the industry, we ask what is the science behind it. This is why we are proud to be home to some of the world’s top researchers in fields like 2D materials and photonics. Their ideas allowed us to look past the status quo in the industry and see opportunities to explore.</li>
<li>New materials define the next step in the technological revolution. There is no shortage of visionary versions of the future technology. We believe that one thing that sets truly potent ideas apart from mechanical extrapolaitions of today’s technology and pure fantasy is acknowledgement of the role new materials are going to play in enabling this future. One of the key answers we have from our science team is that computer components can only really make a leap forward if we leave behind our assumptions about the materials that are typically used in electronics and turn our attention to the emerging class of 2D materials.</li>
<li>Great products are born out of the right combination of form-factor and use case. This is one of the key guiding principles in our work. We believe that any success story in tech can be boiled down to a combination of the right form-factor and a ubiquitous use case (and on the contrary big flops can usually be explained via these two not lining up right). This is the key principle in defining the parameters of the product we are building and its feature set.</li>
<li>Transparency and agility. Existing at the crossing of advanced scientific research and product development we apply the strong sides of both cultures to our ways of working. Peer review and data-driven decision-making, combined with an iterative, agile approach to defining priorities and next steps, help us move fast and achieve results.</li>
<li>Radical honesty. Working with a brilliant on a revolutionary product is a high-stakes game and we believe it is of utmost importance to keep communication within the team as straightforward and open as possible. It extends to all aspects of our life at XPANCEO: from shared understanding of the mission and the product roadmap to simple day-to-day team interactions. Trust in the idea, trus in each other’s expertise and trust leadership go hand in hand.</li>
</ol>
Everything we do is guided by these simple principles, from the core idea to build a smart contact lens as the primary personal gadget, to the choice of technology to make it possible, to organizing the workflow, to making decisions about design and user experience. We know what the end product should look like and be capable of and we know the main parameters of the path that can lead us to this result – all thanks to these simple organizing principles behind our company.

Leadership principles of XPANCEO

Throughout their history, personal computing devices have been steadily getting smaller and ‘closer to the body’: from desktops to laptops, to phones. A recent crop of new form factors follows that trend: smartwatches, VR headsets, smart glasses, wireless earbuds with voice assistants – all of them are more portable and/or more personal in the most corporeal way. However, they still fail to offer the universal capabilities of a full personal computer.

The limitations of the existing form factors and their UX are now becoming obvious. They all share one core flaw, each insisting on a very specific use mode and requiring their users to stick to that mode. Despite all the progress in portability and interface design, you still need to adapt to them and use them as dictated by their small screens, buttons, and controls.

There is another major concern here. Electronic equipment is among the world's fastest-growing trash streams, a big source of hidden waste. A staggering 86 kilograms of waste are produced during the manufacture of just one smartphone. Just this single figure demands that we explore alternatives.

Smartphones will soon have run their course, so it's time for us to look at the way we imagine personal tech in sci-fi. Our imaginary advanced gadgets must offer visual output that covers a full field of view; they must always be prepared to instantly perceive and interpret natural human input. AR/XR glasses offer an approximation of this user experience but can at best pass for a crude proof-of-concept made of available ‘ingredients’.

We believe that the actual next generation of personal computing devices that we call extended computing will help humans transcend some of our natural limitations. It will succeed smartphones to become the dominant personal computing device, as long as it:

(a) retains the size and look of the existing contact lenses,

(b) is capable enough to cover not just some but all personal computing tasks,

(c) becomes one infinite screen that brings together all personal gadgets and data.

This may seem far-fetched to many due to the perceptive inertia of the traditional, silicon-based understanding of electronics. But we don’t have to be bound to it.

Recent research into novel 2D materials has opened a whole new world of possibilities for technological processes. Not only can we build waveguides, lenses, filters, modulators, and other optical components that defy conventional wisdom, but we can also design logical circuitry made of layered 2D materials that relies on photonics.

Our in-house team of physicists is led by Valentyn Volkov, one of the world’s top experts in photonics. They work in lockstep with our engineers to bridge cutting-edge science and product development. Progress in this area will unlock a whole new industry and bring about new categories of devices to be designed and mass-produced.

The revolutionary products are defined by their ability to deliver the most suitable form factor for an in-demand use case. A smart contact lens, the way we imagine it, sits exactly in this sweet spot. Everything the modern digital technologies have to offer, from enhanced sensing and communication to smart control of the tech around us, to contextually useful information, can be blended and seamlessly brought into a user’s field of view. This is going to be the next big thing, the next era-defining personal gadget, just like laptops and phones before it.

The limitations of the existing form factors and their UX are now becoming obvious. They all share one core flaw, each insisting on a very specific use mode and requiring their users to stick to that mode. Despite all the progress in portability and interface design, you still need to adapt to them and use them as dictated by their small screens, buttons, and controls.
There is another major concern here. Electronic equipment is among the world&#39;s fastest-growing trash streams, a big source of hidden waste. A staggering 86 kilograms of waste are produced during the manufacture of just one smartphone. Just this single figure demands that we explore alternatives.
Smartphones will soon have run their course, so it&#39;s time for us to look at the way we imagine personal tech in sci-fi. Our imaginary advanced gadgets must offer visual output that covers a full field of view; they must always be prepared to instantly perceive and interpret natural human input. AR/XR glasses offer an approximation of this user experience but can at best pass for a crude proof-of-concept made of available ‘ingredients’.
We believe that the actual next generation of personal computing devices that we call extended computing will help humans transcend some of our natural limitations. It will succeed smartphones to become the dominant personal computing device, as long as it:
(a) retains the size and look of the existing contact lenses,
(b) is capable enough to cover not just some but all personal computing tasks,
(c) becomes one infinite screen that brings together all personal gadgets and data.
This may seem far-fetched to many due to the perceptive inertia of the traditional, silicon-based understanding of electronics. But we don’t have to be bound to it.
Recent research into novel 2D materials has opened a whole new world of possibilities for technological processes. Not only can we build waveguides, lenses, filters, modulators, and other optical components that defy conventional wisdom, but we can also design logical circuitry made of layered 2D materials that relies on photonics.
Our in-house team of physicists is led by Valentyn Volkov, one of the world’s top experts in photonics. They work in lockstep with our engineers to bridge cutting-edge science and product development. Progress in this area will unlock a whole new industry and bring about new categories of devices to be designed and mass-produced.
The revolutionary products are defined by their ability to deliver the most suitable form factor for an in-demand use case. A smart contact lens, the way we imagine it, sits exactly in this sweet spot. Everything the modern digital technologies have to offer, from enhanced sensing and communication to smart control of the tech around us, to contextually useful information, can be blended and seamlessly brought into a user’s field of view. This is going to be the next big thing, the next era-defining personal gadget, just like laptops and phones before it.

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