“Explosives make a huge light and extremely bright environment that damages your eye completely, so the eyewear must be fast responding in an extremely high-dynamic range.”

Another company getting the money is Kent Displays, which is developing a tablet that uses no energy and is similar to writing on a piece of paper. Yokoyama says researchers are trying to refine what’s known as the Boogie Board.

Boogie Board

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“If we are able to make the writing resolution as good as paper writing, then it will make a huge commercial impact on the product.”

The third of the companies is Crystal Diagnostics, which is developing a system to find pathogens in food and water. That could cut detection of food-born illnesses from a day to as little as 30 minutes.

Akron Polymer Systems, the fourth company, is developing new plastics for the other three.