Video: LCD Shades Smartly Block Points of Bright Light, Leaving the Rest of Your View Clear

Sunglasses are meant to block out bright sources of light, but how many actually do so. That is, how many actively seek out sources of glare and block them out? Sure, there are those tint-shifting lenses that transition from sunglasses to clear lenses when the wearer moves from brighter to darker environments, but upstart company Dynamic Eye wants to up the ante by creating glasses that actually seek out the source of glare and darken the lens only where necessary.

Now, before you judge the clunky concept above, consider the technology here; the lenses are actually LCDs that rely on an embedded camera to locate sources of glare like the sun. Even if there are multiple sources – say, the sun and the reflection of the sun off water or snow – the LCD lenses place a dark spot over the glare. You move, the glare moves, the dark spots move with it (see the video below). The rest of the lenses stay relatively lightly tinted so you can see what you’re doing.

It’s pretty smart, though we’re not sure glasses are really where this technology might be best deployed. We tend to move our heads a lot, even when we’re sitting still, and a bunch of dark spots moving around our fields of visions might induce headaches. But figure out how to use this to blunt the intensity of glare on, say, automobile windshields and the like, and Dynamic Eye might really be onto something.

Either way, it’s a pretty neat idea though nowhere near production. If you’re diabolical plans call for blotting out the sun in the foreseeable future, navigate on over to Kickstarter and drop Dynamic Eye a donation. Four hundred bucks gets you one of the first pairs off the assembly line, if and when they go into production.

Engadget