For over a decade, poLight has been working to develop a lens technology that replicates the function of the human eye. Now the company is finally ready to introduce the product “TLens” to the international market.

The advantage of TLens is that the product is able to focus better and faster than current technology. The product therefore has great market potential considering that camera quality is becoming increasingly important and accessible to people via smartphones. It has taken a long time to research and develop the product that is now going to the market.

STARTED WITH A GEL LUMP

It all started with a small drop of polymer, which the company initially intended to use in connection with fiber infrastructure and laser displays. Polymer has good optical properties. When this polymer was to be improved, in collaboration with Sintef, an aha experience was made.

– Some bright minds got the idea that this polymer would be fantastic to use to mimic the lens in the human eye. We just needed to figure out how to copy the four eye muscles that humans have to shape the polymer. We have spent many years figuring that out and developing it , says Øyvind Isaksen, CEO of poLight.

UNIQUE AUTOFOCUS

The product is called TLense and is short for tunable lens. The human eye's ability to focus on both near and distant objects, using our eye muscles, is at the core of poLight's product.

To achieve this function, we need to shape the polymer. We have solved this by placing a membrane consisting of glass and a piezo material on the outside. When we apply voltage to the piezo material, the glass membrane will bend. This then shapes the polymer underneath, so that the focus changes, explains Isaksen. Horten had the right people When Polight was to establish itself, the choice fell on Horten. Because here it was relatively easy to get hold of highly competent people within the various engineering disciplines that the company depended on. – It has proven to be right. Even though we have had to supplement our expertise with other companies around the world and have established offices in Finland, China, Taiwan and France, the head office will still be in Horten. Because this is where it all started, and this is where we have the foundation for the company, says Isaksen.

Exciting times ahead In the coming years, Isaksen believes that opportunities will open up in many application areas such as barcode readers, robots for production, medical equipment, smart glasses (so-called augmented reality), video conferencing equipment and many other things we have not seen and understood yet. However, the main focus now is to land deals and get the product into smartphones, and then this could quickly become very big.

It's a demanding market, so we have to be clever and commercially smart to make it happen. But it's clear, if we succeed with our strategy, we will become one of the biggest Norwegian IT adventures,