The team developed manually controlled transition lenses to help workers who need safety eyeglasses to adjust the shade of their lens and protect their eyesight.
Team: York Chen, Xing Lin, Runqi Wang, Runlin Wang, Egan Felgus, Ruihan Guo, Jeff Lin
Advisor: Prof. Junqiao Wu
Problem
Workplace Eye Injury According to the Industrial Safety & Hygiene News, each year in the US, around 300,000 workplace eye injuries takes place and 90% of them are preventable with protective eyewear. Injuries on the job often require one or more missed work days for recovery. In fact, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reports that workplace eye injuries cost an estimated $300 million a year in lost productivity, medical treatment and worker compensation.
Construction workers regularly have their eyes exposed to sunlight, resulting in relatively higher chances of acquiring eye diseases and eye injuries. Construction workers who constantly work outdoors need to carry two pairs of glasses, safety glasses and sunglasses. It is very inconvenient to carry two pairs of glasses and moreover, very unsafe if they don’t have enough time to switch from one to the other.
Solution
Quick Flash Safety Goggles Our current product aims to provide quick (3 seconds) transition lenses that combine safety goggle and sunglasses, which can protect construction workers’ eyes from both intense sunlight and physical injury, as well as bring conveniences to their lives.
Material Engineering
Electrochromic Lenses The key science behind the competitive advantage our glasses brings to the market is through the use of electrochromic materials in lenses. Electrochromics are a class of materials that have the ability to reversibly change color when a voltage drop is applied across.
Mechanical Engineering
Prototype Design The purpose of both electronic circuit design and mechanical frame design is focusing on three significant aspects, safety, weight and long-life battery cycle. Most importantly, the safety aspect, which is defined as the quality of the sunglasses, directly influences the quality of customer experiences.
Accomplishment & Future Plan
Our team has completed the first version of prototype. We will keep improving the performance of our prototype and start to do some product test. We will then test our product in the market targeting specific consumers, who influence decision making in the eyewear industry.
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