Sunday, January 20, 2008

New Contact Lenses Go Bionic

From LiveScience online click here for complete article

If you've ever wanted to be the Bionic Woman or a Terminator, new research may at least let you see with their eyes. Scientists have taken the first step toward creating digital contact lenses that can zoom in on distant objects and display useful facts. For the first time, engineers have installed an electronic circuit on a regular contact lens. The difficult part was grafting tiny electrical circuits, only a few nanometers thick onto the contact lenses, which are made of organic materials. Eventually, the technique could yield a plethora of gadgets. Perhaps drivers and pilots could see their direction and speed projected across their view, or people could surf the Web without looking at an external device's screen. Video gamers could immerse themselves in game landscapes directly in front of their eyes. Maybe the technique could even create sight aids for visually-impaired people.

submitted by Shaun A. Saunders

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I imagine such lenses in 'zoom' mode could be quite popular at the beach...but will they one day allow pictures to be taken, too?

The implications of all this???

ron huber.55 said...

If they would allow one to see further into the infra red and/or ultraviolet ranges, one can see the advantages for night guards, though probably a bright flash of light would overload them...?

Anonymous said...

I suspect not Ron. The only part of a night vision scope that gets overwhelmed when flashed is the operator. the camera is capable of handling the huge swings in light. Given that this tech will migrate into an implanted device, I would almost suspect that fast acting hardware to prevent the user from becoming overwhelmed would soon follow.

Anonymous said...

Actually, Paul, what I was thinking of was that it could introduce a completely different level of paparazzi activity...but there are other less than savoury uses it could be put to also, which I will decline to elaborate further.

PS - I'm not old.

Anonymous said...

Damn if they didn't have this very same story line last night on CSI Miami! Only it was surveillance cameras built into sun glasses. This guy was taking pics and movies of his jock girlfriend and selling them on the web.