They are made to light up a path when all other lights go out

May 21, 2013 11:42 GMT  ·  By

Toshiba could have invented and released an augmented reality headset like the Glass that Google is going on about these days, but that's not what it revealed at a recent trade show.

It's thanks to the folks at Tech-On website that the news has reached the Internet. Long story short, Toshiba has invented a pair of glasses that make you look as if you have light bulbs for eyes.

The glasses are equipped with Transmissive Single-sided Light Emission OLED panels, which are transparent.

While they cast no light in the direction of one's eye, they do cast it outwardly, like a pair of eye-mounted flashlights.

Normally, OLED panels are only transparent when light is turned off. Also, when electricity is released, the light is emitted from both sides.

This consumes more power than necessary (although there is no denying that OLED consumes much less than most alternatives anyway).

The real problem is that double-side light emission reduces the control over what gets lit and what doesn't.

That is why Toshiba went out of its way to invent the aforementioned Transmissive Single-sided Light Emission OLED Panel.

Spec-wise, the OLED screens are 1.4mm thick and have a brightness of 450 to 800 cd/m2, and power consumption of 0-7 to 1.6W.

Strangely though, the system uses non-transparent electrodes arranged in a fine striping pattern of opaque metal electrodes and gaps (the gaps allow for the light to pass). Thus, it isn't fully transparent. Just 68% light transmission rate or so.

Now we just have to wait and see if this limitation throws a wrench in Toshiba's plans to market its single-sided OLED in camcorder lenses, advertising, goggles, etc.

No ETA (estimated time of arrival) exists for any of the potential uses. Knowing how slow some things can go, it is probable that nothing will come of this development this year (2013).

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