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The days of traditional screens could be numbered if the news coming out of Washington University is anything to go by. It’s testing contact lenses that could project information into the wearers eyes and initial safety tests look promising.
We’ve been dreaming of a HUD-style vision enhancer ever since Sci-Fi first introduced the concept to the masses with things like The Terminator. But now we’ve taken a significant step forward and are genuinely getting closer to making Terminator-vision a reality. Researchers have been testing a primitive version of a contact lens display with just one LED — a single pixel — but they’re pursuing the technology with renewed vigour after safety studies concluded that the contact lens caused no adverse affects to the wearer when tested on rabbits.
The main problem, like so many of these ultra-thin technology ideas, is the power source. The current implementation uses a wireless battery, but it can’t be more than a few centimeters away. Thankfully another possible hurdle to potential eyeball-mounted displays, the fact that your eye can’t normally focus on something actually on its surface, was solved by a collaboration with boffins from Aalto University in Finland. The team managed to use the material of the lens to modify the focal length of the eye, a bit like a traditional contact lens does, allowing you to focus on the lens display itself.
With safety confirmed, let’s hope the project progresses at a rate of knots. Augmented reality shows great promise, but is a bit lame on the phone. I want my Terminator-vision now. The next stage in testing is to push forward with their plan to get the lens to display some pre-determined text — may I suggest “Hello World”? [BBC]
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You’d think that with such a low powered device they could use heat from your body or tiny solar panels on your eyeball to power it.
“The main problem, like so many of these ultra-thin technology ideas, is the power source” – have they tried a tiny ion battery?
I’d of thought the fact that contacts slip all over the place would be one of the main issues to, with a complicated display you’d be feeling fairly see sick very quickly, unless the lense stays static so you can move your focal point over the information displayed.
They can make weighted contact lenses now for things like astigmatism that stay in place over your eye’s own lens, with gravity keeping its orientation more or less fixed. I should think they’ll use a similar system for this kind of thing.
Yeah I have weighted lenses and they never slip anywhere.
C’mon, where do you sign up for things like this?
I’ve wanted to be a cyborg for years and you never see these things advertised as going on public trials.
The monkeys and rabbits get all the fun, cyborg arms and now HUD lenses, share the love. But not the caged mistreatment kind
Tell me about it. As soon as it’s possible I’m plugging into the matrix.
now if they could do night vision and 20x zoom I’m in!
I’m more interested in the ability for it to tell you everyone’s name. No longer will men have to strain to remember that bloke-you-met-once’s name. Freedom from the tyranny of poor memory!
Has anyone here ever tried to make a HUD? It’s a freakin nightmare and the worst part of all is focus distance. If you try to fit them to glasses and someone looks through them, it’s nigh on impossible to get it at a point where the information looks like an “overlay” and isn’t just a blur in front of the eyes.
Good on ‘em.
This research actually took place at the University of Washington. The BBC got it wrong, and I also notified them of the error.
Source: I’m currently a student there.
Application on Android phone
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.as.terminator