Looking for information? Try these data glasses

Putting on a pair of novel data glasses with an OLED microdisplay allows you to see not only the real world, but also a wealth of virtual information. Imagine looking through a repair manual; the trick here is that you turn the pages using just your eyes.

Users can control the display of these data glasses with their eye movements.

Up to now, mechanics carrying out complex repairs relied mostly on information from handbooks to guide them. But leafing through books tended to break concentration and repairs took longer.

This situation is by no means improved by using PCs or laptops to call up the information; mechanics still need to click their way through page after page to find what they need.

Another disadvantage is that tools have to be put to one side in order to deal with the book or computer. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Center for Organics, Materials and Electronic Devices Dresden (COMEDD) have been working for several years designing interactive 'head mounted displays' (HMDs) based on OLED technology for just such applications.

These displays offer access to what is known as ''augmented reality'', enhancing the real world with additional visual information. Navigating through this augmented reality used to require data gloves or a joystick.

Now COMEDD scientists, working together with their colleagues from the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Karlsruhe and near-the-eye technologies specialist TRIVISIO, have succeeded in developing data glasses fitted with displays that can be controlled by the movements of the human eye.