The next chapter of Chinese optics begins on children's desks.

In the world of technology, what truly deserves admiration is not only those inventions that defy imagination but also the people who are willing to let technology return to its original purpose.

James Dyson is such an engineer - scientist. In the 1980s, he invented the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. Instead of confining this technology to the industrial field, Dyson introduced it into ordinary family life. Those fluid - mechanics equations that were once buried in laboratories were transformed by him into experiences that every household could perceive - quieter airflow, more stable air pressure, and a cleaner space.

Wang Xuan, known as the "Contemporary Bi Sheng", also has a similar story. In the 1980s, when China didn't have a mature computer industry yet, Wang Xuan led his team to invent the Chinese character laser typesetting system, which brought the printing industry into the digital age and enabled information dissemination to break free from the constraints of lead and fire for the first time.

They both embody a scientific spirit: while climbing the peak of technology, they never forget to benefit ordinary people.

This is the spirit that Cheng Dewen identifies with.

Cheng Dewen has always been at the forefront of optical technology. He is a doctor jointly trained by Beijing Institute of Technology and the University of Arizona in the United States, a doctoral supervisor, and a national - level leading talent. He is also one of the earliest experts in China to systematically study free - form optical systems. For more than two decades, he has been focusing on the field of AR/VR optical display - a discipline directly related to future image and spatial perception.

In 2015, Cheng Dewen founded NedOptics, a technology company centered around optical design. With high R & D barriers and a stable global customer base, NedOptics has gradually been regarded as one of the representatives of "China's optical hard technology". He and his team have provided optical module solutions for many Fortune 500 companies such as Lenovo, Xiaomi, ASUS, and Qualcomm, enabling high - precision imaging and low - distortion presentation of virtual images within an extremely short optical path. Lenovo's ThinkReality A3 equipped with NedOptics' optical module was even rated as one of the "Top 100 Best Inventions of the Year" by TIME magazine.

Cheng Dewen, a doctoral supervisor at Beijing Institute of Technology and CEO of NedOptics

While his team was optimizing the next - generation AR/VR optical solutions, Cheng Dewen noticed something that couldn't be ignored: the virtual "eyes" armed with technology were becoming more and more powerful, while real human eyes were becoming more and more vulnerable.

"When we went to high schools for lectures, it was very difficult to find a child without glasses in a classroom." Cheng Dewen realized that this was a serious public health crisis - according to the "White Paper on Myopia Prevention and Control among Chinese Children and Adolescents" released by the National Health Commission in 2022, the myopia rate among national children and adolescents had reached as high as 53.6%. The trend of myopia at a younger age was becoming increasingly serious and was gradually evolving into a social problem affecting the health of a generation.

At that moment, his attention shifted from virtual images to the real world. For him, this was not so much a "career change" as a return - a return to the origin of technology and the original sense of mission of scientists. Cheng Dewen clearly knew that what he really wanted to do was not just to challenge the technological limits but also to hope that science could create broader social value. He said, "Problems caused by optics should be solved by optical methods."

This moment became a turning point in Cheng Dewen's scientific research career. He led NedOptics out of the AR/VR optical laboratory, broke through the limitations of product technology modules, and embarked on a new exploration.

Pursuing the Limits of Optics

In the field of optics, hardly any other technology combines complexity and value like the free - form surface. The common spherical or aspherical elements in traditional optical systems have a rotationally symmetric structure, while the free - form surface has no fixed geometric symmetry. It allows designers to adjust the curvature in any direction, enabling light to be refracted or reflected along an asymmetric path while still being able to focus precisely.

Breaking symmetry endows the optical system with unprecedented degrees of freedom, enabling long - distance display, wide - angle imaging, and extremely low distortion in a very small space. Therefore, it is regarded as one of the most challenging top - level technologies in modern optical design.

Cheng Dewen is one of the earliest scholars in China to conquer this technology.

From undergraduate to doctoral studies, Cheng Dewen has been climbing the peak of optical technology all the way. As early as his undergraduate years, he began to study free - form surfaces at Beijing Institute of Technology. During his master's degree, he studied under Professor Wang Yongtian, an expert in optical engineering, specializing in the design optimization, simulation, and head - mounted display technology of free - form optical systems. Subsequently, he went to the University of Arizona in the United States to pursue a doctoral degree and continued to delve into the field of free - form optical display.

In 2011, he returned to his alma mater, Beijing Institute of Technology, to teach. An idea became clearer and clearer in his mind: China not only lacked scientific research in optical technology but also lacked the transformation of research results. He said, "Good research results should not be confined to the academic field. I hope that scientific research results can effectively promote social development and generate social and economic benefits, and these benefits, in turn, can continuously promote technological progress."

For Cheng Dewen, technological leadership is important, but who can use the technology is equally important. Optics should not only belong to scientists and should not be confined to laboratories. Based on this belief, he founded NedOptics in 2015. In just a few years, NedOptics grew into a leading enterprise in the domestic optical module field.

In the field of free - form optical technology, NedOptics has comprehensively deployed key technologies such as free - form surfaces, Birdbath, and optical waveguides, established close cooperation with industry giants like Qualcomm, Lenovo, and Xiaomi, and won the favor of many well - known investment institutions. NedOptics has mastered the full - link capabilities from optical design, mold manufacturing to inspection, assembly, and adjustment. This means that China for the first time has the underlying technology in the field of AR display optics that can compete with international giants such as Hoya, Zeiss, and Epson.

NedOptics Laboratory

When Technology Looks Back at "People", Science Begins to Have Temperature

After more than twenty years of accumulation, Cheng Dewen's team has established a leading position in the field of optics - owning more than 300 optical technology patents (including more than 10 US patents), participating in the formulation of three national standards for head - mounted displays, and undertaking the transformation tasks of scientific and technological achievements of several national key projects.

During years of scientific research and cooperation, he found that the breakthroughs in display optics in China mainly served the industry and virtual reality, while the "visual health" field directly related to people's daily lives lacked scientifically verified technical solutions. "A large number of people with low vision, amblyopia, and myopia are urgently in need of better vision solutions," he said.

Parents choose lights, glasses, and training programs for their children, but they still can't answer: Why do children become myopic? Can myopia be prevented optically?

Therefore, while the industry was still chasing the "lighter, brighter, and more immersive" AR/VR narrative, Cheng Dewen shifted his research direction from virtual display to real - eye protection, from industrial design to visual science, and from challenging technological limits to caring about people's feelings and health.

This shift seemed quite risky to the outside world. Even today, AR/VR is still a hot track that capital is competing to chase, while eye - protection devices are still relatively unpopular among capital, and consumers also need to pay a high cost for education. It can't be regarded as a mature market.

But Cheng Dewen's logic is simple: "On the one hand, we should use optical technology to promote industrial development and transform industrial development bottlenecks into scientific problems for research; on the other hand, optical technology should benefit people's work and life through the transformation of research results, making technology generate value and give back to society."

Before deciding to enter the unfamiliar field of visual health, he also saw the chaotic current situation.

From massagers, eye patches, to various training devices and even devices claiming to "cure myopia", the myopia prevention and control market is flooded with a large number of products with short - term effects. Most of them only provide psychological comfort or marketing gimmicks.

In his view, to truly solve the problem of eye health, especially myopia, we must start from the law of light propagation. The essence of myopia lies in long - term close - range eye use - the eyes focus on the near - distance for a long time, the ciliary muscle remains continuously over - tense, the adjustment can't be relaxed, the eye axis is passively elongated, and finally, structural changes occur.

"When the root of the problem lies in the optical level, any solution that is divorced from optics cannot really work." It was based on this insight that NedOptics launched the DOT Reading and Writing Desk Pro and the DOT Reading and Writing Desk Max.

Cheng Dewen's thinking stems from the field he is most familiar with. In the era of AR display, what they pursued was to make the image "closer", that is, to simulate a real long - distance view within a few centimeters to achieve an immersive experience. In myopia prevention and control, what they do is the opposite - to make the eyes "see farther" and bring optics back to the physiological comfort state of human eyes.

So, the team began to design a brand - new system: through a special optical structure, the picture at a distance of 20 - 33 centimeters is projected to a distance of 3 - 8 meters, allowing children to have a visual experience similar to looking into the distance outdoors while studying at the desk.

This principle is later called the "distant - image" principle. It is not simply a magnifying - glass reflection but a combination of various optical design methods such as free - form surfaces, light splitting, refraction, and reflection. Simply put, it is to "turn the near into the far". "You can think of it as a reverse magnifying glass," he gave an example. "A magnifying glass can converge light from a distance into a point, while the distant - image technology does the opposite, projecting a book 20 or 30 centimeters in front of the eyes to a distance of 3 - 8 meters, allowing the eyes to relax as if looking into the distance."

Initially, their inspiration came from AR/VR headsets. Since NedOptics has complete industrialization capabilities, the first eye - protection device they tried was also in a head - mounted structure. However, after several rounds of testing, the team found a very real problem - the prototype weighed more than 100 grams, and children simply couldn't wear it. More importantly, wearing such a device would change the user's behavior pattern, which was not friendly to children without glasses.

So, they turned their attention to desktop devices. In 2017, the team started to develop a desktop solution - "flattening" the optical system originally encapsulated in the headset and integrating the light - engine module and the lighting system into a reading and writing desk.

The real difficulty lies in "clarity" and "comfort". It is easy to converge light with a convex lens, but to make a picture the size of several A4 papers projected to a distance still maintain low distortion, high brightness, and no flickering, one must use free - form surfaces and light - splitting technology to design and tune the system with extremely high precision.

The complexity of the manufacturing process also exceeded expectations: each device has to go through hundreds of processes, 10 - nanometer - level precision machining, dozens of assembly, adjustment, and inspection procedures, and finally, manual visual inspection. As Cheng Dewen jokingly said, "After some parents saw the production line, they understood that this thing is not as simple as putting two mirrors together."

Meanwhile, the team also designed an ergonomic angle suitable for children's writing postures, allowing children to keep their cervical spines naturally stretched when using the device and avoiding the additional burden on the cervical spine caused by lying on the desk.

This innovation for the first time turned "eye protection" from behavioral reminders into a technical solution. After the distant - image eye - protection technology was launched, it won the 2024 Geneva International Invention Award.

After the product was launched, NedOptics immediately carried out clinical research with Wenzhou Medical University. The results proved that the distant - image technology can slow down the transient myopia of children's vision (the shift of diopter towards myopia) and the elongation of the eye axis after close - range eye use, thereby reducing the potential impact of close - range eye use on the occurrence and progression of myopia.

Meanwhile, the external environment was also changing.

In recent years, multiple departments such as the National Health Commission and the Ministry of Education have intensively issued action plans for myopia prevention and control among children and adolescents, formulating standardized guidelines from lighting standards, outdoor activity duration to the use of electronic products. The policy signal is very clear: visual health is becoming an important part of public health.

Driven by policies, improved social awareness, and technological progress, a new industry inflection point is taking shape.

Technology, Further Benefiting the Public

For a decade, NedOptics has been pursuing the limits of optical parameters - shorter optical paths, lower distortion, and higher light efficiency. Now, they are starting to ask another question: When technology is powerful enough, can it illuminate more people?

This is exactly the original intention of NedOptics to launch the DOT Reading and Writing Desk Pro and the Max. In 2025, the new - generation DOT Reading and Writing Desk Pro and the Max were launched successively, marking that NedOptics' layout in the field of distant - image eye protection has entered a mature stage.

The DOT Reading and Writing Desk Pro continues the precise long - distance imaging characteristic of the distant - image optics at a distance of 3 - 8 meters and is upgraded with a healthy light source certified by TÜV, achieving no stroboscopic effect and no blue - light hazard. Its optical system has been further optimized, and the DOT pattern achieves 360° low - contrast full coverage. Coupled with the