With their own displays, wearables become independent of the smartphone. However, the miniature displays not only have to be very energy-efficient, they also have to be highly flexible.
Just a slight shake of the wrist is all it takes to activate a clear, high-resolution display on the user’s forearm. The user can then use a finger to tap and select screen content and control functions: check e-mails, get navigation or log in to social media. It is all made possible by a micro-projector integrated into the bracelet from French company Cicret. It projects a virtual display onto the user’s skin. Sensors then precisely capture the user’s finger movements, enabling him, for example, to “mirror” his smartphone’s touchscreen on his arm and control all its functions via the bracelet. It is a ground-breaking development in wearable display technology, offering maximum flexibility and a user-friendly screen size. The display only exists as yet in a promotional video, however. Only an initial prototype has been made so far, financed through crowd-funding.
Through such developments, “classic” displays will come to be used for the first time in conjunction with wearables in the foreseeable future. Great hopes are placed in OLED technology, as it is highly energy-efficient and the organic light-emitting diodes can be applied to a flexible substrate. However, the analysts at Lux Research predict that real roll-up, fold-up OLED displays will not be available before 2018. Another technology is electronic ink, or “e-ink”, as is familiar from e-readers. In this, the light is reflected as in the case of normal paper, so the display does not light up. Text or images can be continuously rendered without the need for a power supply – making this type of display correspondingly energy-efficient. And they are already highly flexible today. Polyera, for example, employs the technology to utilise virtually the entire surface area of its “Wove” bracelet as a display. The e-ink display is flexible and bendable, like the rest of the bracelet.
(Picture credits: Fotolia: kentoh)