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Adaptive Optics May Enable Super-Human Vision
jonwiley writes: "Science Daily reports in this article 'Adapting technology originally developed by astronomers to obtain better images of the heavens, a University of Rochester scientist has developed an optical system that has given research subjects an unprecedented quality of eyesight. The research dramatically improves the sight even of people who have 20/20 vision.'" I knew I should hold off on laser surgery. This and a bionic claw, and superhero fantasies are mine!
I really want to try one of these things. I can remember the first time I put on glasses when I was nine or ten, the difference was like a heat haze in front of my vision had disappeared - or going from VCR to DVD. So you can imagine that trying on adaptive optics is even more astonishing.
Do these things give you better than 20/20 vision? Is 30/30 going to be a catch phrase of our future :-)
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What if this article detailed a technology that could make people smarter?
Sign me up!
At what point is improving ourselves dangerous or unethical?
Dangerous? When you're in the first trial. Darwin frowns on early adopters.
Unethical? When I run out of cash and have to steal to feed my bioenhancement habit.
It's interesting to me that vision enhancement is largely seen as harmless... but how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?
Many people will object to it. Many coutries will ban it, except for bringing the below average up to average. It will be publicised as the greatest evil since genetically engineered food on the covers of Time and Newsweek. It will be available though, just as megalomaniacs will be having clones made within 5 years.
It's interesting, though, that the ability to enhance intelligence will have an exponetial factor in its growth. That is, it will be limited by things like skull size, oxygen requirements, signal propogation delays, and so on, but it is also limited by the intelligence of the people who are working on it. This is one of the technologies that can lead to Vinge's Singularity. ( see http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html )
I'm really curious what we will look like a thousand years from now. If we do in fact expand outward, it will be the most adventurous types who do so. So we have self-selection to make sure that any colonies on other planets will be much more novelty friendly than earth is. They'll also have more kids, in the long run. And the second generation colonies will be founded by the most adventurous from the first stage colonies. I don't see a universe filled with intellectual, sessile, nearly immortal homebodies. On the contrary, my mental picture is much closer to biker gangs or that alligator guy on discovery channel. Long life an risk aversion are not survival traits.
Yeah, yeah, I am a little nuts. But in a good way.
His device broke a single laser beam into 20 sub-beams and recombined them into a spot about an inch across that could move anywhere across an 8 inch circle. It was steered using piezoelectric mirrors (each on separate mounts - the whole thing looked like a frankenstein project compared to current technology). The focusing was entirely done by shifting the phase of each sub-beam.
There was feedback in the system that used varying frequencies to slightly modulate each beam and then combine the phases to get the best focus on a target. The whole thing could work automatically to track a small white target on the end of a stick.
The researcher inadvertently discovered that if he walked through the beam it would lock onto and track his shiny belt buckle. I saw this demonstrated in an 8mm movie he shot. Considering that this was being developed for tracking nuclear missiles he said he found this a little disturbing.
Also of note is his early use of color animated computer graphics. He printed out beam fluxes across the region during various simulations as integer digits on line printer paper. Then he assigned his young son to color in all the digits a certain way, so 0 went uncolored while 9 was yellow. Then he used a cable-release on his 8mm camera to animate the calculated simulations of beam tracking.
They've come a long ways, I see. His crude device probably cost $100,000 or more and I expect took about a year to build.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Since video card technology is progressing so quickly, human visual perception will become the system's last bottleneck. The only logical outcome is for people to start overclocking their eyeballs.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Heh, you mean we might actually see this? ;-)
... I could really enjoy the scenery at the beach. ;-)
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I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
...actually he still is.
It is more on the test subject side of it though.
But still, it is quite exciting. When driving he now sees things before they happen.
20/20 means "Can see at 20 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 20 feet." So, 30/30 vision would mean "Can see at 30 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 30 feet." i.e.; "normal" vision.
Someone with better than normal vision has 20/x vision, where x < 20. For example, Chuck Yeager in his prime apparently had 20/10 vision... he could see at 20 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 10 feet!
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
I'd be very surprised if it was a lens and not a mirror. I did my PhD in making mirrors for adaptive optics - I've met the group from Rochester. Almost all adaptive elements (currently) are reflective - although LCD elements (used in phase rather than amplitude mode) could potentially be used in transmission.
But I wonder if in theory they could use the measurements to smooth out all the imperfections, presumably using laser surgery, and permanently give you the super vision.
Yes, they absolutely could. A guy i shared an office with during my PhD was doing exactly these types of measurements (see here ). He measured my eye, and came out with a complete map of the aberrations - i.e. the deviation from the perfect shape. He discovered that my cornea deviates from ideal by less than 0.5 microns - which is pretty good (i'd need about 0.25 dioptre lens to correct this).
Edric.
It's already been invented.I'm sure most of you have already heard of this but anyway:
Just get a hold of one of the older Sony Handicams with Nightvision and hack it. There are many sites on the net which will guide you through it, like: This Site
I know these aren't exactly glasses, but with a little work...you could make a pretty discrete system.
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What if this article detailed a technology that could make people smarter?
At what point is improving ourselves dangerous or unethical?
It's interesting to me that vision enhancement is largely seen as harmless... but how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?
(I am not fishing for a fight, just curious what people think. FWIW I say bring on all the enhancements science can provide. I wear glasses -- I'll take the rest too, thank you.)
These advancements are truly an amazing thing and I applaud the science behind it. With all technology, however, it has the potential to be abused.
It's a good thing bow and arrows weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed.
It's a good thing stirrups weren't perfected, otherwise archers would be terribly more deadly whilst on horseback.
It's a good thing gunpowder wasn't perfected, otherwise extra thousands of people would have been killed in wars.
It's a good thing steam power wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have lead a dreary existence in factories.
It's a good thing railroads weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of indians would have had their livelyhood destroyed and land stolen.
It's a good thing ships weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have drowned at sea.
It's a good thing aircraft wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed in aircrashes.
It's a good thing airships weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been burned in hydrogen fires.
It's a good thing automobiles weren't invented, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed and maimed in traffic.
It's a good thing computers weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have suffered carpal tunnel syndrome.
It's a good thing space shuttles weren't perfected, otherwise slightly more than half a dozen would have been killed by O-ring failures.
It's a good thing slashdot wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been died of boredom reading really stupid posts...
--
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This calls for a Haiku:
I can see much more
With my bionic peepers
Voyeurism's fun.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Nope... i think people of wealth and power won't have any use for them. Though they may equip others with them.
First: there's not much advantage. The images will still be projected on the retina, which is composed of discrete sensor cells (rod and cones) of a fixed size, which is reasonably well matched to our current vision. I doubt they could consistently squeeze better than 10% sharper vision out of a pair of normal eyeballs. 'Eagle eye vision' is as much a trained processing capacity in the brain as it is a clear image on the retina.
Admittedly, one could integrate magnification into the system, but then we hit...
Second: these aren't contacts we're talking about. They'll be goggles - neither attractive nor useful for daily life. Frankly, IR vision would be more useful, and the (relatively) few peopl who own those look pathetic when they flaunt them.
(there are people with natural vision 'better than 20/20', and it's generally less useful than being double jointed)
Third: first application? Military. Count on it. Even the limited security uses will be secondary. Bausch and Lomb would love to land a DoD contract
Fourth: cultural status symbols in the long term are consistently *useless* things -- long nails, bound feet, whatever -- because the true 'status' consists of being 'important enough' that you don't need to use physical capabilities, and instead employ the capabilities of others.
'Enhanced capability' status symbols, like SUVs and HUM-Vs are generally faddish, high visibility, but almost invariably never utilized aas capabilities
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
There are two potentially frightening prospects to these new bio-technological enhancements:
1)They will probably only be accessible by people of power and wealth.
2)They will be misused by Gov't
These advancements are truly an amazing thing and I applaud the science behind it. With all technology, however, it has the potential to be abused.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
So can I, mostly because gnats don't carry pistols.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
variable contrast, so that colors and shapes are discernable in low light and bright light can be seen without glare. This is effectively what pupillary dilation and contraction do... glasses could superimpose extra iris that would cover up even more pupil than normal, but boosting incoming photons would be considerably more cumbersome.
IR/UV vision: This could be achieved with little footprint by coating the glasses with a material that absorbed the desired band and emitted visible light, Of course, you'd have to focus on the glasses, which might be strenuous...
telescopic vision: Just make the lenses flexable...
Flicker correction: I've heard some people are bothered by certain monitors, fluorescent lights, or a combination, because the refresh rate causes a subliminally perceptable flicker. Perhaps phosphorescent materials in the glasses could create a "persistence of vision" that would blur out the flashing. There would be a cost in resolution, perhaps, but it would ease a lot of headaches.
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
I wonder if in theory they could use the measurements to smooth out all the imperfections, presumably using laser surgery, and permanently give you the super vision.
Almost certainly. (At least for one focus distance, and probably near-ideal for most of the range of focus.)
All the mirror is doing is temporarily removing the eye's deviation from an ideal lens. Laser surgery should be able to permanently remove the imperfections (at least in one layer of the lens system), producing the equivalent of the mirror + eye system without the mirror.
This would be equivalent to having perfect eyes (or very close) - not the approximation the meat machine (even in its best incarnations) comes with. That would be the best that could be done with an eye that size, made of those materials. You might be able to do slightly better by separately perfecting both the lens and the cornea.
Now you could probably get better yet by substituting other materials (or a multi-lens mix of them) to get less chromatic abberation, or to focus better over a broader range of distances. And of COURSE you could do better by making the eye bigger. But it is interesting to see that the "stock" eye averages far enough from perfect that a very noticable improvement can be made by reshaping it (or the virtual equivalent).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I find it ironic that an article written about superhuman vision is done in such a small font. Maybe it's my browser though.