Press release -
EssilorLuxottica and Politecnico di Milano launch a partnership for the smart glasses of the future
EssilorLuxottica and Politecnico di Milano signed an agreement for the first joint Smart Eyewear Lab, within the city’s soon to be Parco dei Gasometri
The lab will host R&D activities for the next generation of connected glasses, combining digital technologies with bioengineering, physics of matter and AI skills
The partnership provides initial investments of over 50 million Euro and will employ more than 100 researchers
Milano (July 19, 2022) – EssilorLuxottica and Politecnico di Milano have created the first ever joint research center aimed at designing the smart glasses of the future, EssilorLuxottica Smart Eyewear Lab.
The agreement was announced today by Vittorio Colao, Minister for Technological Innovation and Digital Transition; Giuseppe Sala, Mayor of Milan; Fabrizio Sala, Lombardy’s regional Minister for Research, Innovation, University, Export and Simplification, and Internationalization; Ferruccio Resta, Rector of Politecnico di Milano, and Francesco Milleri, Chairman and CEO of EssilorLuxottica. It involves an investment worth over 50 million Euro.
The project will encompass industrial research and experimental development of devices underlying a new generation of wearables which are capable of autonomous network connection. It is a pioneering and tangible project that will enable the development of technologies and services by means of a widely used interface such as eyewear.
The EssilorLuxottica Smart Eyewear Lab will initially last five years and will employ when fully operational over 100 among researchers and scientists working closely together in a dedicated space within the Innovation District, which the Politecnico di Milano is currently developing in the Parco dei Gasometri, located in the Bovisa area in Milan. The University thus aims to bridge the gap between universities and businesses, developing a highly international research environment that fosters synergies and transversality.
The project’s main challenge will be the development of core hardware, software and application technologies to enable humans to interact with the digital world. To do so, the EssilorLuxottica Smart Eyewear Lab’s industrial research and experimental development will be divided into five macro-objectives: analysis and development of electronic and photonic components, as well as algorithms to acquire, process and offer real-world information via augmented reality to the user. Their development will integrate the technology within various prototype glasses, as foreseen in the last two objectives, by developing materials, charging systems and algorithms to certify their performance in real environments.
The EssilorLuxottica Smart Eyewear Lab in Milan will work as part of the Group’s R&D platform, already operating globally, with more than 30 R&D centers dedicated to vision care, eyewear design, sustainability and digital transformation, around 1,000 researchers and more than 11,000 patents.
EssilorLuxottica and the Politecnico di Milano also aim to jointly create an ad hoc curriculum fostering the development of increasingly specific skills in the wearable and smart eyewear field and virtuously feeding the new Lab’s research activities. The goal is to attract young talents, PhDs, researchers and teaching staff to put their effort into this innovative project, to train new resources who can meet the demands of the current and future labor market.
“The agreement with EssilorLuxottica represents a milestone in the development of the ‘Goccia di Bovisa’ area, for several reasons,” explains the Rector of Politecnico di Milano, Ferruccio Resta. “Certainly, the first one is that the University now works alongside an internationally recognized example of excellence, an Italian group that is synonymous with innovation – a great catalyst for other entrepreneurial and research endeavors within the innovation district taking shape in the Gasometri area. The second reason relates to the realm in which we will operate: the metaverse, of which we can only guess the possibilities today, is a complex area of study and experimentation, involving technological fields developed within the University: from electronics, to photonics, to data science. It opens up unprecedented perspectives that are not limited to technological innovation or the development of new products, but reshape entire processes, services and relationships. It is precisely on this basis that the Joint Research Center will operate over the next five years."
“Innovation is at the heart of EssilorLuxottica’s business model,” Francesco Milleri, Chairman and CEO of EssilorLuxottica, added. “The lines between physical and virtual worlds are becoming increasingly blurred, outlining completely unprecedented horizons and offering a unique challenge that will propel us into the future. These new models are keys for unlocking an enormous potential of development for the job market and the entire economic system.”
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Politecnico di Milano is a scientific-technological university which trains engineers, architects and industrial designers.
The University has always focused on the quality and innovation of its teaching and research, developing a fruitful relationship with business and productive world by means of experimental research and technological transfer.
Research has always been linked to didactics and it is a priority commitment which has allowed Politecnico Milano to achieve high quality results at an international level as to join the university to the business world. Research constitutes a parallel path to that formed by cooperation and alliances with the industrial system.
Knowing the world in which you are going to work is a vital requirement for training students. By referring back to the needs of the industrial world and public administration, research is facilitated in following new paths and dealing with the need for constant and rapid innovation. The alliance with the industrial world, in many cases favored by Fondazione Politecnico and by consortiums to which Politecnico belong, allows the university to follow the vocation of the territories in which it operates and to be a stimulus for their development.
The challenge which is being met today projects this tradition which is strongly rooted in the territory beyond the borders of the country, in a relationship which is developing first of all at the European level with the objective of contributing to the creation of a single professional training market. Politecnico takes part in several research, sites and training projects collaborating with the most qualified European universities. Politecnico's contribution is increasingly being extended to other countries: from North America to Southeast Asia to Eastern Europe. Today the drive to internationalization sees Politecnico Milano taking part into the European and world network of leading technical universities and it offers several courses beside many which are entirely taught in English.
