Based in 2021, XPANCEO has emerged as a pioneer in reimagining how we work together with expertise. In contrast to corporations creating the following era of smartphones or laptops, XPANCEO is taking a essentially completely different strategy: computing that sits straight in your eye. At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2025, the deep tech firm unveiled a number of prototypes that display their imaginative and prescient of invisible, weightless computing by good contact lenses.
The core idea behind XPANCEO’s expertise is each easy and revolutionary: exchange conventional silicon-based units with computing that feels as pure as your personal imaginative and prescient. By integrating superior expertise into contact lenses, XPANCEO goals to create a seamless mix between digital data and the bodily world—what they name an “eXtended Actuality expertise.” Their philosophy, “the very best gadget is not any gadget,” displays their dedication to creating expertise that disappears into the background whereas enhancing human capabilities.
These good contact lenses should not simply theoretical ideas or early laboratory experiments. At MWC 2025, XPANCEO demonstrated working prototypes with capabilities starting from well being monitoring to augmented actuality (AR), suggesting that their imaginative and prescient of invisible computing is approaching actuality.
The Three Essential Prototypes
Sensible Contact Lens with Wi-fi Powering Companion
One of many elementary challenges for any wearable gadget—significantly one as small as a contact lens—is energy supply. XPANCEO’s first prototype addresses this problem with a wi-fi powering system that considerably advances present expertise.
This lens options absolutely distant energy switch with twice the vary of earlier trade options, permitting customers to energy their lenses with out direct contact. The powering companion is designed as a conveyable accent that may be carried in a handbag or pocket, related in dimension and kind to an ordinary contact lens case.
Regardless of the superior expertise, the lens maintains a versatile, light-weight design. Security stays vital—the radiation ranges are corresponding to frequent wearable units, addressing potential issues about having a powered gadget so near the attention.
Sensible Contact Lens with Wi-fi Powering Companion (XPANCEO)
Biosensing Sensible Contact Lens
The second prototype showcases the potential of good lenses for well being monitoring. Conventional biomarker measurements usually require invasive procedures like blood attracts, which will be inconvenient and uncomfortable. XPANCEO’s Biosensing Sensible Contact Lens takes a unique strategy by measuring physique parameters straight from tear fluid.
The lens options a complicated biosensor that works with nanoparticles to boost the sign of parts current in tear fluid. This expertise allows high-sensitivity monitoring of key well being indicators together with:
- Glucose ranges, vital for diabetes administration
- Varied hormones together with cortisol, estradiol, estrone, progesterone, and testosterone
- Nutritional vitamins B1, B2, B3, E, and D
By repeatedly monitoring these biomarkers, the lens might rework private well being administration. Quite than periodic testing, customers would have fixed consciousness of their physique’s chemistry, doubtlessly enabling earlier detection of well being points and extra personalised wellness approaches.
Biosensing Sensible Contact Lens (XPANCEO)
Sensible Contact Lens with IOP Sensor
The third prototype addresses a particular however vital well being concern: glaucoma administration. Glaucoma, a number one reason for blindness worldwide, is characterised by elevated stress inside the attention (intraocular stress or IOP). Early detection and steady monitoring are important for stopping imaginative and prescient loss.
XPANCEO’s IOP Sensor lens gives non-invasive, steady monitoring of eye stress. At MWC, the corporate demonstrated this expertise alongside a customized eye mannequin that replicates the human eye. The lens incorporates a virtually invisible optical sample that shifts in response to adjustments in intraocular stress.
When customers scan this sample with an AI-powered smartphone app, they obtain real-time, exact measurements of their IOP. This technique might dramatically enhance early glaucoma detection and ongoing administration, doubtlessly stopping irreversible imaginative and prescient loss by well timed intervention.
Sensible Contact Lens with IOP Sensor (XPANCEO)
Further Improvements
Past the three essential prototypes, XPANCEO additionally showcased two further good contact lens applied sciences that broaden their imaginative and prescient of invisible computing.
Improved AR Imaginative and prescient Lens with Built-in Microdisplay
XPANCEO demonstrated an enhanced model of their AR Imaginative and prescient lens that includes an built-in microdisplay. In contrast to typical augmented actuality methods that require cumbersome headsets, this expertise is embedded straight right into a contact lens. The microdisplay can undertaking digital data straight onto the retina, creating a mix of digital and bodily worlds.
What makes this significantly spectacular is the scale constraint—creating show expertise sufficiently small to slot in a contact lens whereas sustaining visible readability represents a major development. The AR Imaginative and prescient lens factors towards functions starting from navigation and real-time data show to utterly new types of digital interplay.
Knowledge Studying Lens with Wi-fi Transmission
The fifth prototype unveiled at MWC was a Sensible Contact Lens for Knowledge Studying, outfitted with an built-in wi-fi information transmission antenna and mass-production-ready versatile electronics. This lens allows real-time switch of data from the contact lens to a companion gadget.
The companion gadget serves a twin goal—functioning as each a charger and a computational hub. This structure permits the lens to stay small and comfy whereas offloading intensive processing duties to the companion gadget. Customers can obtain biometric data collected by the lens straight on their smartphones, making the information instantly accessible and helpful.
Technical Achievements
XPANCEO’s prototypes are a number of breakthrough applied sciences which can be working to beat longstanding challenges in wearable computing.
Among the many most important achievements demonstrated at MWC 2025 had been:
- Sub-0.5mm projectors: These ultra-miniaturized show elements allow visible data to be projected whereas sustaining the skinny profile mandatory for a snug contact lens.
- World’s thinnest versatile 2D conductors: These permit digital elements to bend with the lens, important for each consolation and sturdiness.
- Excessive-sensitivity compact IOP sensors: These can detect minute adjustments in eye stress whereas remaining sufficiently small for integration right into a contact lens.
- Nanoparticle-enhanced biosensors: This expertise amplifies the sign from biomarkers in tear fluid, permitting detection at very low concentrations.
These applied sciences can provide options to a number of challenges: miniaturization, flexibility, energy effectivity, and sign detection. Many of those capabilities had been beforehand thought unattainable on the scale of a contact lens.
The connection between the contact lenses and their companion units is a vital design alternative. Quite than making an attempt to pack all computing energy into the lens itself—which might create energy and warmth points—XPANCEO has developed a distributed computing mannequin.
The companion units deal with energy supply, information processing, and connectivity with different methods. This strategy retains the lenses skinny and comfy whereas nonetheless enabling subtle performance. The companion units are designed to be unobtrusive, related in dimension to a contact lens case that may be carried in a pocket or purse.
Reshaping Human-Laptop Interplay
Probably the most profound implication of those lenses is the potential shift in how we work together with computing. XPANCEO’s assertion that “the very best gadget is not any gadget” suggests a future the place expertise recedes from aware consciousness whereas changing into extra intimately related to our our bodies and senses.
This strategy might remove lots of the limitations and frictions in present human-computer interplay. As a substitute of typing, swiping, or talking, interplay would possibly occur by extra pure means like gaze route. As a substitute of pulling out a tool to entry data, that data could be obtainable inside our visible discipline each time wanted.
This can be a important evolution from the smartphone period. Whereas smartphones made computing transportable, they nonetheless require deliberate consideration and bodily interplay. Contact lens computing would create a world the place the interface between people and digital data turns into practically imperceptible, creating actually ubiquitous and frictionless entry to the digital world.