You may have seen television shows where futuristic characters use implanted electronics for super human power, including super vision. Though we only have Lasik surgery, contacts, night vision goggles, or binoculars to aid our vision now, the future may hold some interesting developments for contact lenses.
A contact lens embedded with electronic circuitry could give us mere mortals the opportunity to experience super human vision. Image your eyes with telescopic powers or night vision capability? You may have heard of the new Google Glass, a Android-powered computer you wear like eyeglasses.
With Google Glass, data is placed directly in your field of vision (in the upper right corner), and you can search, translate, and take pictures on the go But, imagine if you didn’t need glasses to view that information. What if you could purchase contact lenses that display miniature yet easily discernible readouts providing information such as driving directions, weather reports, or instant web-surfing? Engineers are working on making contacts smarter with electronics and a wireless display. This may be science fiction at the moment, but most of the core technology is available, though one of the major problems facing developers is how to transmit consistent and reliable power to the contact lenses. But, science fiction often becomes fact, and smart contact lenses are on the way.
Source: www.eetimes.com
Babak Parviz and his team at the University of Washington have developed a contact lens with an electronic circuit, an LED light, and an antennae that picks up power and data through a wireless connection. Imagine checking your text messages, social network sites, or email without your laptop, tablet, or smartphone? Michio Kaku, an author and futurist believes smart lenses will become as common as our smartphones are now. They will be able to translate speech, identify individuals and provide instantaneous biographical data, and offer all the information available on the Internet.
Source: www.designyoutrust.com
This new breed of contact lens, the smart lens, will not only be able to aid the vision-impaired and bring the Internet to your eyes, this futuristic product will be able to provide medications and antibiotics that can help treat eye diseases such as glaucoma, and can gather wellness information and monitor health indicators through biological sensors incorporated in the lenses.
These smart lenses won’t be appearing at your local optometrist’s office any time soon. There are still in the early stages of development. Scientists from South Korea’s Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology recently tested a pair of smart contact lenses on rabbits and did not notice any side effects. Research will continue on making smart lenses safe and usable for humans. Soon, we won’t be carrying around our smartphones; we’ll be wearing them in our eyes!
