Slashdot Mirror
Still More Bionic Eyes
jeno writes "An Australian-invented 'bionic eye' device is about to begin human trials. The device consists of a silicon chip inserted into the eye, which is designed to act like a retina -- receiving images captured by a pair of glasses worn by the user."
When can I get a Geordie LaForge Visor so I can tell when people are lying by their body temperature?
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
Well, I hope that radio signal is encrypted or keyed to the individual.. what if two of these folks stand right next to each other?? What if they walk near a radio transmitter, do their eyes go haywire??
Also, how do they know that animal trials were successful??
Just imagine if your bionic eyes get hacked and you spend 24/7 looking a banner ad burned into your silicon retina.
Something like this, if it works, is awesome! To lose your sight, and then regain it? Just like the VISA commercial, priceless!
The use of interfacing devices to intercept neural signals from the brain is incredible! It has already been done (to an extent) aurally. Rush Limbaugh totally lost his hearing, yet benefitted from an implant (cochlear).
As to what it could be, and where it could go? Who cares? If I was on the receiving end, I sure wouldn't be paying too much attention to the options!
I would just be looking at my family and being thankful for the chance to do it!
The article fails to mention how many frames per second (if that's the appropriate term) this technology would deliver... even 10x10 pixels would be helpful if delivered at 30 - 40 FPS, but almost worse than useless if delivered at 2 FPS...
The other bionic eye alluded to in the title is this article from Wired and its accompanying Slashdot post. Excellent read if you missed it.
:P
(And no, I don't need the karma, its stuck on... "yahoo, you're not 100% useless 'round here" or something...)
forma3
Speech for the Deaf, Sight for the Blind, now all we need is Sex for the Ugly and I'll be all set.
Think of all the legible text can be viewed in a grayscale 10x10 image. Wouldn't be much use unless the product happened to be one letter long.
The problem is that they used a close up of face to pixelate. There so much detail and so much psychological baggage associated with faces that is pretty poor example. I would think more distant objects would be easier to distinguish especially with the proper video processing.
These are not really replacements for the eye, just aides like a walking stick or a seeing eye-dog. Even at 100x100 the patient would still be legally blind and have no real peripheral vision.
Manufacturers clamor for market dominance in the bionic eye market, and come up with a hodgepodge of several dozen incompatible technologies. The Justice Department demands the ability to remotely observe what people are looking at, and pressures manufacturers to secretly include key escrow technologies in their circuitry. Copyright-holding corporations realize that the junction between the optic nerve and the CCD chip is ripe for targeting, since you can effectively close off the "analog hole" by sticking an agent in there that enforces copyrights on all visual images passing through. They lobby intensively and as a result the government steps in and mandates that within X years all vision should be digital and incorporate some approved form of copy-protection. This is hailed by the corporate press as a "victory for the consumer" because of the expected abundance of pay-per-see content, even though the early adopters get struck blind by the mandated copy protection- making their eyes worthless, although they are still prized by a small minority for their ability to boot up free operating systems.
Manufacturers continue to trip over each other in their efforts to corner the market, and come up with even more incompatible formats. Consumers who purchase the systems find that the left eye from manufacturer X (about to go out of business) and right eye from manufacturer Y (about to go out of business) both want to be in charge of what you're looking at. Getting different components to cooperate is next to impossible. When one eye breaks, you have to get them both replaced because everything is incompatible with everything else and every model is discontinued or obsoleted as soon as it comes out. People start to write scathing reviews about how the industry and Congress both need to get their act together.
Meanwhile, consumers look at this fiasco and rightly conclude that their eyes are working fine, and that there is no reason to throw them out.
Damn now I have to get a fcc license for my eyes.
Hacker Media
Maybe, in the end, giving machines human-quality visual capabiliy will be a result of using machines to return the same to impaired humans.
This would still be a huge improvement over total blindness.
You also have to remember that the brain is extremely flexable and it will be able to learn to recognise shapes even at this low resolution. You would learn to cope very well. You just wouldn't be able to read probably.
You are used to seeing things at a normal human resolution. Imagine you are a hawk with the ability to see a mouse 100 meters below you. You are then shown human eyesite. You wouldn't be able to recognise anything either. But you would adapt.
Oh, enough with the anti-Government conspiracy theories already! When will you all understand that if you have nothing to hide that there is no reason to be paranoid like this. What are you a terrorist or something?
Ok, this is a serious question so don't mod me down.
Would it be possible, with this new eye, for colorblind people to see color? Or is this still more along the lines of gene therapy.
Just as long as the bionic eye doesn't make that "do-doo-do-doot" funny noise everytime you use it. That would drive me nuts.
I'm sorry but this isn't 1940's Nazi Germany -- this is America 2002, we're not a police state, no matter how much you may think this to be the case.
Reminds me of Babylon 5 when G'Kar has his bionic eye, especially when he can take it out and still see from it.
(Sheriden and Delenn - honeymoon night)
Londo: (something along the lines of) It almost makes you wish you could peek in and see what they are doing.
(G'Kar looks distracted)
Londo: G'Kar, where is the prosthetic eye that Dr. Franklin made for you?
(G'kar is smiling)
(Scene changes to show the eye on a table looking towards the honeymoon bed)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I'm not american, so I'm not entirely sure about this. But my impression of the Patriot Act, is that it creates an unofficial police state.
Doesn't the FBI now has the ability to detain anybody, indefinitely, without the right to a trial, or access to a laywer?
The whole bloody thing is a giant witch hunt. I could point a finger at anybody, say that they're a terrorist, and the FBI can essentially lock them up forever without a trial.
That sounds like a police state to me
What? Me? Worry?
Hi,
We (IMS-CHIPS) work on something similar. But in our case, the pixels/photodiodes are included on the chip, which is implanted. No need for a separate camera. Very simple and elegant.
Have a look:
http://134.2.120.19/index_en.html
http://www.ims-chips.de/home.php3?id=d0822
If I remember right, there was a Slashdot article about 2-2.5 years ago where they were doing just that with cats. Had a series of images showing what they reconstructed with data from the optic nerve, directly compared with the same image as viewed by a camera strapped to the cat's head. The images from the nerve were blocky, but the general shapes involved were recognizable. Guess I finally have an answer to my "hmm...wonder when they'll have enough data collected to insert artificial image data into the nerve?" question.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
As opposed to the problem of going blind because you happened to be looking in the direction of the bomb when it went off?
Which doesn't negate it's value. If you are legally blind, then any improvement in your vision is valuable, even if it still leaves you legally blind.
CNN is reporting on the same story, only they have the tagline that "Blind people are driving the bionic-eye market"
Nazi Germany wasn't always Nazi Germany. "Good" societies can go bad. Do you think the Germans were just stupid, or inherently evil (en masse, I mean -- certainly some individuals could easily be argued to have been evil, by most definitions of the term).
My deviantArt site