Better looking

Self-focusing spectacles are on the horizon, doing away with the need for bifocal or progressive lenses. Universal Ventures of the Cayman Islands, USA, is developing variable focus glasses that measure the dis- tance to the object the wearer is looking at. The trick, say the inven- tors, is triangulation: infrared light from a Light Emitting Diode (LED) inside the frames is bonnced off the wearer's eyes to detect their direc- tion of gaze. By measuring the angle at which the eyes converge, the sys- tem calculates the distance to the object the wearer is looking at. It then adjusts the lenses accordingly.