Future windows could change their tint or opacity on demand to keep out unwanted heat, light or nosy neighbors. A team from Princeton has now developed a self-powered “smart window” system that uses a transparent solar cell to harvest UV energy from sunlight.
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Electrochromic glass that switches from translucent to transparent and vice versa is currently limited to a blue tint. That's set to change with a new manufacturing technique that increases the color options on offer, while also speeding up the switching process by almost 10 times.
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Companies are experimenting with ways to balance glass' ability to let light in with the need for a little privacy. Now, Kinestral has unveiled a new system of smart-tinting glass called Halio, which can be adjusted manually or set up to switch automatically.
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Current electrochromic window tinting technologies are generally slow to change state, struggle to achieve high levels of darkness, and rely on a constant current to maintain their tint. A team at MIT has developed an energy-efficient thin film material that overcomes these shortcomings.
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If you're bursting in and out of shadowy forests, the slow reaction time of photochromic glasses just can't keep up. That's where Uvex's Variotronic glasses come in, which change tint in just a tenth of a second. We recently tried a pair out.
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In less than a year, electrochromic sunglasses have gone from being experimental to an actual product, with Ctrl announcing its Ctrl One cycling glasses just this month. Should you prefer multi-use electronically-tinting sunglasses, however, you might want to get yourself a pair of Skugga shades.
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Glasses with transitional lenses are a neat idea in theory, but they have some shortcomings in practice. That's why researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing an alternative – clear eyeglasses that can be manually tinted into sunglasses, by the user.
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As the mechanical iris lens in a normal camera is far too large and bulky to incorporate in smartphones and other compact mobile devices, a team of researchers has developed a non-mechanical, "smart glass" iris that may bring much greater image quality to future smartphones.
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A color-changing film could provide a new and better method of obtaining fingerprints from metal surfaces.
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The lounges and lobbies of San Francisco's W Hotel have taken a turn for the futuristic, incorporating variable tint "dynamic glass" courtesy of California-based start-up View.
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