On October 18, 2024, the four-day global electronic technology event - CEATEC 2024 (Japan Electronics High tech Expo) came to an end at the Chiba Makuhari International Convention and Exhibition Center in Japan. This exhibition was attended by 808 companies and organizations from Japan and abroad, attracting over 100000 professional visitors and hosting more than 100 conferences. Mr. Fan Qinqiang, a member of the American Academy of Engineering, inventor of Micro OLED and Micro LED, co-founder and director of Hupan Optoelectronics, was invited to give an opening speech on the opening day.

 

 

 

Academician Fan's speech topic is "AI Empowering Smart Glasses". He explored the development process of Handsfree head mounted devices for over 30 years and analyzed the development process, current situation, and gains and losses of smart head mounted devices from their birth to the present. As early as 1991, DARPA invited the team of Academician Fan to design a hands-free head mounted computing device and paid $50 million over five years to KOPIN for the development of a key component - a micro display screen. Over the past 30 years, many large companies around the world have conducted extensive research and exploration on head mounted devices, launching various forms of products such as Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, Meta Oculus, Apple Vision Pro, etc. These projects have either been shut down or have been unable to enter the market for a long time. Academician Fan believes that most of these products are too eager for success or too ambitious, which violates the "Fan's Five Principles" that he has summarized over the years. He believes that a successful smart glasses must follow the following five principles:

Fan's Five Principles: Firstly, humanity comes first, and secondly, technology. In order for a smart glasses to be accepted by the public, it must be lightweight and as close as possible to ordinary glasses.

The second principle of the "Fan's Five Principles" is that the presentation of virtual world information should not be overwhelming and become a hindrance or obstacle for people to perceive the real world.

The third principle of the "Fan's Five Principles" is to maintain users' perception of the state of the real world and the virtual world. Lack of perception will increase insecurity.

Fan's Five Principles "4: Sound is a better input medium, especially with the arrival of generative AI and the communication medium of AI smart glasses. Sound is the first choice.

Fan's Five Principles: Create for user value, not for creation. The current VRMR glasses integrate too many functions, neglecting the balance between cost and user value.

 

 

Academician Fan believes that various XR glasses currently in use have to some extent violated the five principles mentioned above, which is the main reason why XR devices have not been widely accepted by the public. He divided his head mounted devices into two categories: smart glasses and smart headsets. For the first type of Smart Glasses, they should provide the wearing experience of regular glasses as much as possible, with a weight not exceeding 50 grams, allowing people to wear them anytime, anywhere, and for a long time. He suggested that developers should not rush to achieve results, but should provide value to users step by step and in stages. Firstly, they should provide the value of "speaking" and "listening", and use smart glasses to achieve "real-time translation, phone calls, information" and other listening and speaking functions; The second stage of the product can add cameras to replace the user's vision and AI to replace the user's brain, providing users with the ability to process real-world information, such as "reading newspapers, object recognition and search"; In the third stage, display can be considered, but the display cannot obstruct the user's observation of the real world. Academician Fan believes that the display scheme of optical waveguide is also a kind of obstruction to the real world, which violates "Principle 2". For the second type of Smart Headsets, Academician Fan believes that products weighing less than 150 grams and priced below $1000 are worth striving for. Smart headsets cannot be made into helmets, as current MR devices integrate too many functions and are too heavy and expensive. The core value of these devices is to provide users with an immersive 3D surround cinema experience, portability, and affordable price, which can be achieved with lightweight products. Academician Fan believes that the display screen size of these devices needs to be reduced from 1.4 inches and 1.3 inches to 1 inch, and combined with a large field of view Pancake optical solution, this can significantly reduce the size and weight of the device, greatly reducing costs. For example, the Lakefront Light Core has achieved a 1-inch MicroOLED display screen based on this technology. The Pancake large perspective solution provides an excellent immersive experience.

 

 

Finally, Academician Fan made predictions and prospects for the future of smart glasses. He believes that smart glasses will be the first to become popular, and smart headsets will continue to become smaller, lighter, and cheaper. One day in the future, these two types of devices will merge into one, achieving unity in form. At that time, smart glasses will be completely popularized and become an indispensable tool for people to carry around.

 

 

Japan is a major hub for innovation and application of electronic technology and micro display technology. In this exhibition, Hupan Optoelectronics and its affiliated company Solos jointly showcased a full range of products, including MicroOLED micro displays, Pancake optics, AI smart glasses, covering the entire industry chain from upstream devices, display optical system solutions, to terminal smart glasses, demonstrating its strong strength in various aspects of the XR industry.

 

 

 

Lakefront Optoelectronics showcased its full range of MicroOLED microdisplay products from 0.26 inches to 1.31 inches, which can meet the application needs of current and future hot technology fields such as EVF, XR, and AI. Especially in this exhibition, three series of Pancake XR optical solutions, NP93, NP95, and NP105, were showcased. This series of solutions is based on the 1-inch and 1.3-inch micro displays of the lakeside optical core, achieving a multi field of view solution from 93FOV for a single eye to 115FOV for both eyes. Compared with the solutions displayed at the light expo, its image clarity and immersion have been greatly improved, reaching the conditions for large-scale application, which can help downstream XR manufacturers quickly launch the next generation XR glasses products with leading visual effects.

 

 

 

At the same time, Solos showcased the super lightweight intelligent AI glasses Solos AirGo 3, which uses ultra lightweight materials and ultra-thin lenses, integrates ChatGPT artificial intelligence system, supports 25 language translations, and can communicate with friends from all over the world in real-time without barriers. At the same time, the next generation AI glasses prototype Solos AirGoV with Camera was exhibited.

 

Solos AirGoV