SBG Labs is a Sunnyvale, California based optical company that is working on a new technology that delivers digital imagery directly to eyeglasses or contact lenses.  The technology is called heads-up displays since users can look directly through them and still see the real world.  While looking straight ahead, the lens can pull up a digital image of a map, overlay images, or other virtual information.

The eyeglasses made with the DigiLens contains a tiny projector inside the frame and is just slightly larger than ordinary glasses.  As long as the glasses are attractive to wear and are lightweight, it might appeal to consumers according to UNC-Chapel Hill professor Henry Fuchs.

“People who work on head-mounted displays are hungering for something that people would be willing to wear for more than an hour,” stated Fuchs in an interview with The New York Times, “something that would go in one’s eyeglasses and not be too much clunkier than regular eyeglasses.”

Desney S. Tan at Microsoft Research and University of Washington associate professor Babak A. Parviz are working on a similar project that focuses on creating a contact lens with miniaturized electronics along with optoelectronics built in to the lens.  The price of the DigiLens is still not yet known.  The technology is currently in the testing phase.