From an Ottawa Basement: The Canadian Engineer Who Built eSight for His Two Sisters

In this story

eSight began in a basement in Ottawa, with an electrical engineer trying to give his two sisters their sight back.

Roland Mattern told the company’s origin story on Double Tap. “Our founder, his name was Conrad Lewis, and he was an electrical engineer based in Ottawa, Canada, our nation’s capital. And both his sisters were afflicted by Stargardt’s disease, which is a juvenile form of macular degeneration.”

Both lost their central vision early in life. “He was inspired to find a solution to allow his sisters to see again,” Mattern said. “So he tinkered in the basement with a variety of ideas and eventually came up with the concept that is now our current product.”

Built for the purpose, not adapted to it

Mattern argued that this is what separates eSight from the field. Other devices, he said, take existing hardware and repurpose it in software. “eSight is purposefully engineered to help enhance the vision of people with central vision loss.”

The candidate group is specific: roughly 20/70 to 20/80 acuity and worse, up to 20/800 central vision loss, with good peripheral vision remaining.

A camera captures what the damaged macula can no longer process. Software applies magnification, colour filters, contrast and brightness, and the result is projected onto two OLED screens, one per eye. The wearer uses peripheral vision and whatever central vision remains to read the image.

“The way our users describe it, when they dial in the settings, the blind spot simply shrinks away,” Mattern said. “In many cases they get back to reading 20/20, they recognise faces.”

The mobility problem other headsets have

The design decision Mattern was proudest of concerns walking around.

“Many devices are VR goggle-based. They work very well for sedentary tasks, watching TV or reading,” he said. “But if you want to walk around, that’s not an option to you, because your peripheral vision is completely blocked. And of course that’s what you use to navigate.”

eSight leaves the peripheral field clear, so a wearer can move through a shopping centre or a park using their own vision to navigate, then glance up into the monitors to read a street sign or a food label. A patented mechanism called bioptic tilt lets the visor angle up slightly for exactly that — what Mattern called almost a reverse bioptic. Sitting down at a computer or a film, the visor drops full-time in front of the eyes.

Comfort was the third objective, he said, because many users wear the device all day at work or in school.

Where eSight is now

This interview was recorded in early 2023, when eSight 4 was the current product. In January 2024 the Michigan-based Gentex Corporation announced an asset acquisition of eSight, and now manufactures the successor, eSight Go. The engineering that got it there, though, started with one Canadian engineer and his two sisters.

Resources

• eSight: esighteyewear.com