TDK Shows Smart Glasses That Project Their Image Onto the Retina
TDK Corporation said on Oct. 2 that it has demonstrated a display for smart glasses that projects its image straight onto the wearer's retina, off a flat mirror thin enough to sit inside a lens.
What that buys, in TDK's account, is glasses that look ordinary. The company calls the part a meta-optic mirror: a film 150 nanometers thick, patterned with nanoscale reflectors that redirect laser light to the one angle the eye needs. TDK says it passes about 80% of visible light, leaving a lens as clear as ordinary eyewear, and that the projected image cannot be seen by anyone facing the wearer. TDK calls the demonstration a world first. The performance figures are the company's own, and no independent measurement of the part has been published.
The mirror it demonstrated works in one color only. TDK says it aims to show full-color operation and to reach mass production within the next few years. What it is showing now is a prototype, and no price or ship date has been announced.
TDK says earlier systems of this kind used a curved mirror mounted in front of the eye, which made it hard to build glasses that look normal. The flat mirror replaces it. The company contrasts its part with waveguide displays, which steer light through a flat pane, and calls those complex in structure and costly to make. By TDK's account, the meta-optic mirror can be made with processes comparable to those used for semiconductors.
A prototype is due to be exhibited at CEATEC 2026, which opens Oct. 13, and at electronica on Nov. 10–13.
TDK has also signed a business cooperation agreement with QD Laser, Inc., a Tokyo-listed laser maker. The agreement pairs QD Laser's retinal projection technology and patents with TDK's laser modules and mirrors, to develop light-source modules and optical engines for smart glasses.
