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Bionic Contact Lens May Lead to Overlay Displays
pfman writes "A University of Washington researcher has developed a
contact lens including circuitry and a matrix of LEDs. Although not yet a working prototype, this may be a foundation for terminator/robocop style overlay displays in which computer graphics could be superimposed on your normal vision. 'Building the lenses was a challenge because materials that are safe for use in the body, such as the flexible organic materials used in contact lenses, are delicate. Manufacturing electrical circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick, about one thousandth the width of a human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a millimeter across.'" Kotaku notes that this has some obvious gaming implications.
Someone needs to read a book on how the eye works.
You only have receptor density for reading dead center in your eye. You can't put Terminator-style displays of to the side of your FOV, because you can only see motion and coarse detail off dead center.
Let's see, LEDs 1/3 mm across. My pupil is about 5mm, so that gives me a resolution of about 15 pixels across. Not so good, especially considering that to get that 15 pixels I would have to block everything else!
So how is it useful?
First: How are they envisioning powering a device like this?
Second: It's my understanding that human vision requires continuous eye motion to maintain visual perception. Try holding your eyeball still by (gently) applying finger pressure to it through your eyelid. You'll notice after a few seconds that your field vision slowly shrinks into nothing. If an image moves in perfect sync with your eyeball, isn't your brain likely to stop seeing it after a short time?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
It gives new meaning to "owned in the eye".
Isn't that safer? I don't want implanted chips or digital display in my body.
What about those of us who are squicked by the thought of anything getting near our eyes, let alone contact lenses?
While I have no expertise in the field, I've always assumed that we'd first see this with glasses. The classic HUD on aircraft is an image projected onto glass in the pilot's line of sight. I figured we'd see this when we either had a) some sort of transparent material with a tiny lcd grid so that wireframe graphics could be overlaid on the real world objects or b) VR goggles scaled down to the size of comfortable glasses with the world projected inside with the overlays on top.
The one other variant I could think of for a projector technology would be glasses with a tiny low-power laser tracking the retina and beaming photons into it.
Thinking about VR, though, it does make you wonder about the interrogation potential for completely controlling someone's environment. If you thought the Ministry was scary in 1984, just imagine the interrogator controlling your entire reality. There was actually a surprisingly good TNG episode where Riker was put through VR interrogation so that he would reveal something important. Each of those constructed realities seemed entirely convincing at first but as he started to find flaws, the reality would shatter and be replaced by something new. Scary.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Just wait, soon they'll sensor what we are allowed to see through the implants? All we need is an Amish president after Abraham Lincoln to begin a program as this, and we'll all be forced the equivalent of procreation without seeing who or what we are doing it with.
get my point?
Sincerily,
Sleepless Citizen
Hmmm.... eyeball mounted circuitry, and cops with Tasers... what could possibly go wrong?
I wear contacts and would so get these but only if they make the Six Million Dollar Man do-do-do-do-do noise when I am squinting!
This is a useless invention because the image needs to be at a focal center - either at the retina, or at least a few feet from the eye. Here the image is in the *worst* place, at the iris; it will be totally blurred.
The
Since it's not a true implant to get the clock to display floating in the corner of my eye. The actual implant cost me a few points of karma so that's all my cyber samurai had and... Wait this isn't a thing about Shadow Run?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Now I can find Sarah Connor.
Nike makes the Maxsight http://www.bausch.com/en_US/consumer/visioncare/product/softcontacts/nikemaxsight.aspx Basically they have a version of the lenses that is supposed to make things like a tennis ball appear brighter which in turn makes it easier for you to track visually. From the description Developed by Nike and Bausch & Lomb, Nike MAXSIGHT is a soft contact lens that eliminates glare and increases contrast. The two tints, grey-green and amber, are tuned to different sporting needs. Grey-green is for sports played in bright sunlight, where visual comfort is a concern, and amber, is for sports like tennis that require tracking a fast-moving ball.
I, for one, welcome our new bionic rabbit overlords.
Don't rabbits have good eyes anyway? They seem to be eating carrots all the time.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
There goes your cornea!
Funny, I am reading "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge these days, and now this article comes out. It's like deja vu all over again.
"Please stare into laser with remaining eye to recharge lens."
circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick
Hmm... A lens containing microscopic pieces of metal next to my cornea.
What could go wrong?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Lots of poker players wear anything they can to cover their eyes.
Imagine this as a sort of colored contact lens that can change. You could have your eye colors rotate or for poker have it look like your pupils are constantly dilating and contacting. I cant imagine looking at that wouldnt be be disturbing, especially if the eyes weren't in sync.
Now I can watch porn AND look at the road!
Geez, this is sweet! I really, really want this. But it occurred to me that I'm glad I didn't get Lasik, and did Orthokeratology instead (Lasik wasn't an option).
Honestly, if I'm going to have to wear contacts when this comes out commercially, I'd rather just upgrade my current lenses, and not have my cornea cut. Sure, one can do both. But I'd rather just do one.
Aside from all of the other problems people have pointed out, what happens when you blink? The display moves and then settles back into position? Movement of the lens isn't a big deal when the whole thing is clear, but I would imagine it would be really annoying when there is a display on it.
Pr0n, 24/7 and no one else will know!!!
Can anyone see dust or debris on their eye ? Yes , but impossible to focus on.
All I want to know is, how long until we get contacts that overlay naked female bodies over what we see?
Although I am highly enthusiastic at the idea, I have long wondered how you can get the image to focus correctly on the retina without the user having to strain his eyes to see an image which is SO close.
expandfairuse.org
An LED at the surface of the eye's cornea/lens will flood the entire retina with light. It will appear as a red glare filling your field of view, and not as a little pixel of light. That is because the surface of the lens is out of focus, and so the wide angle light from the LED just spreads out.
If it were an array of lasers with tight beams, then it could work, but you can't make small lasers produce tight beams(due to the diffraction limit) without additional optics that couldn't fit under the eyelid.
Great. So now it will be normal to sit slackjawed staring into space and randomly laugh, cry, flinch, or whatever.
It was bad enough when everyone and their mother got little blinking "I'm not crazy, just on the phone" earpieces and proceeded to pretend they were deranged.
I'm amazed at the sheer number of people who came up with ridiculous technical limitations. Focal issues? You think given that you have unlimited control over LEDs that it can't display an image that when actually VIEWED will appear correctly? You think we don't already do this with normal displays? Same goes for resolution issues; all it takes is adaptive control software. Power? Come on, article on bio-power not 3 months ago. And seriously, closing your eyes would make it better, not worse, just given lighting conditions. Everyone seems to forget the immense amount of control work that goes into a lot of our simple, everyday gadgets to make them appear to work seamlessly. I suspect the exact same principles will be applied here. This was announcement of a cool concept, not a finished object with all the kinks worked out. Sheesh...
Strange that I was daydreaming about this exact same thing not so long ago...hmm.
Seems like a lens you can effectively turn off would be a lot more useful than this. I'd prefer contacts to glasses, except I don't want to worsen my already shitty eyesight using corrective lenses when not necessary, i.e. reading or such. Needles to say, you can't exactly remove contacts constantly on a whim, and poking things in your eyes sucks anyway, so the less you have to mess with them the better. I wouldn't doubt there's a fairly huge market for this either. Of course I'm probably just dreaming here..
"yes boss, I'll get on with the progress report for this afternoon just as soon as Jenna Jameson finishes what she's doing in RetinaScope(T). And no, don't expect me to be standing up anytime soon."
as with all things technical/IT - this will be subverted for porn, spam and profit before you can sneeze.
They're pretty neat but if you look at the sun it bur#!2k4#$#$#_#_####[NO EYEBALL FOUND]
It's possible that they've thought of the issue of focusing the image.
One possibility would be that the display would use tiny lasers, to project very narrow beams of light at just a small group of receptors on the retina.
Different eye shapes/sizes would seem to make that difficult, but there's probably some way to do it, even if it means having to have "prescription" displays that match your eyes.
Of course it would only be useful to have text dead centre, but a vague blur to the side could tell you that there is something to read.
Assuming that you could lay down the LEDs in a dense display, how could you see it? The contact lens is in contact with the cornea and damn near the pupil, nowhere near the imaging position of the eye. You can't image scratches on your contact lenses or cornea because it isn't anywhere near where the eye focuses. Of course you could generate diffraction patterns that would result in images when focused by the eye but that would require phase modulation and insane resolution.
Of course you could always put a cool LED light show on the irises. Just right for raves and clubs.
Putative eyeglass based designs use a frame mounted projector that fires into a beamsplitter which then re-images the display at a distance (often infinity). As a result they are far more practical.
Overlaying is great if the mind can make the information useful--and judging the internet, not much usefulness from all that information (or is it DATA?).
With nanotech, I look forward to taking pictures/video without even picking up a device and getting a true sense of taking a life-like photo. A true point and 'click' (well there' no click in contact lens). Wearing contact len cameras will sure elevate social networking (or social recording) to the next level, too.
The Goatse virus for bionic vision.
What about focus? If you're looking at something far away, how will the display be sharp? In fact, how can it ever be sharp enough to read that close up?
:p
My eyes also go crazy if they perceive something moving around in my field of vision closer to me than where I'm focusing; sometimes I have to close one eye in a car when looking at the road when windshield wipers are moving across the front window. I think it's a brain thing though, because sometimes I do the same when watching the speeder bike sequences in SW:RotJ for example
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
There's a huge issue with this: When looking at an object at any distance, your eyes adjust alignment and then focus the lens. If you have a HUD in the lens surface, the focal depth is dramatically different between the HUD and the distant object.
You can experience this now. On a bright white background, it is possible to relax your focus until any object on the surface of your lens become distinct outlines (typically, tiny pieces of debris that are washed away by your tears and blinking). To notice them, you move your eye a light distance and then stop, trying to discern if any shadows/etc are still sliding on the surface liquid. We've all experienced this sensation of trying to "look at" something like that, which causes the cascades of moving one's eyeball, thus the shape, etc.
With a HUD, I was suspect that only blurry "regions" are actually possible. Much as if you held two pens up to to your eyes and aligned them so there was one (in the same line-of-sight as your original focal point), as a the shape of the "single" pen is hopelessly blurry and useless when trying to see across the room, the HUD wouldn't be the "terminator-style" chart of information.
Really, what I'd like to see instead is augmentation of a different type: A 360 proximity sensor uses a sensitive area of your skin and various degrees of pressure to let you walk around in the dark, or to "see" behind you. Or perhaps 4 tones for the compass points in relation to your head position, allowing you to use it in a directed manner, like personal sonar or radar.
But auto-shading your contact lens would be fun. It's a rose-color world.
As soon as I can get a reticle tied to my skull gun, we're in business!
If it can show me the hit points and magic points of my foes, then sign me up for a beta test!
At first, I was thinking that focus would be the main issue, since the middle of your lens is where all the light rays from the external world cross at an almost-point. Being so close to that (on the cornea), this lens might have focus issues.
But maybe not. All it really has to do is put incredibly small pixels there to colour (or obscure) the light from a given point. As long as pixels don't overlap too much (when out of focus), it could work.
I will be interesting to see how this develops further.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I'm really surprised that no one has brought up Vinge's new book Rainbow's End yet. The idea of having contact lenses as monitors is a key technology in the book (along with a wearable computer to power it). In the book, the lenses were used to overlay VR over the real world. With the number of pixels that each lens was supporting, I'm totally amazed that none of the characters had their eyes fried out. I also thought that the mobile, combat routers was a cute idea, but that's a different topic :-)
I read that recently as well. Good discussion of the implications of augmented reality, though I think some of his other books were better stories.
For another depiction of AR, I recommend Dennou Coil, a 24 episode anime set in a not-too-distant future, where AR is commonplace and there is a second-life type virtual world overlayed on top of the real world. (It's been fansubbed, but not officially released in English.)
I predict a burgeoning market for bionic lens detectors. We wouldn't want anybody cheating on their exams.
Jean Luc Picard tried one of these Borg electronic contact lenses -- it didn't work well for him.
http://uk.gizmodo.com/borg.jpg/
Seven of Nine liked hers, though.
http://www.startrekdesktopwallpaper.com/new_wallpaper/Star_Trek_Voyager_SevenOfNine_JerryRyan_desktopwallpaper_800.jpg/
...just like my watch!
Last I checked there was about a 1 in 100,000 risk of a vision-threatening infection with contacts in general, and an even higher risk with extended wear. My O.D. keeps trying to talk me into getting Lasik, because not only is it now cheaper than contacts over the long term, it is *almost* but not quite lower risk for someone as nearsighted as I am (-6, -7 diopter).
Like a lot of science, the applications for this may not be obvious right away, or obvious to a layman.
[Insert layman joke here.]
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Tiny pieces of metal near eyeballs don't mix. What happened to the conductive plastic breakthrough from 2 years ago?
See also this short story: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/3/19455/41933
...and I'll finally be able to pull an answer out of a list of suggestions to the question "Hey buddy, you got a dead cat in there or what?"
The lens system of the eye (cornea, crystalline lens and the overall air/liquid interface) is a kind of parallel optical computer that applies a function to both the angle of incidence and the location of incidence in order that light coming from points on a roughly planar region in the scene map neatly to points on the retina. Interestingly, if you look through a pinhole, you force the angles of incidence and the location of incidence to be correlated and the lens system of your eye becomes a spatial modulator - You can see the imperfections on the cornea, the shape of any cataracts you have and even the outline and surface details of the adjustable lens if it's a bit too small to span the pupil.
Anyway, the lens system is mainly geared for mapping angle of incidence to points on the retina. The location of incidence part is there so more than one point on the surface of your eye can contribute to gathering light. The parallax errors of the set of extra points is what causes the lack of focus for points outside the current scene focal plane.
Conventional helmet mounted displays work by using lenses to make their small-and-near displays appear big-and-far. In other words, every pixel in the display reaches your eye as a plane wave whose direction dictates the point on your retina that gets illuminated. The effect is ruined when the optics are bumped even slightly, so these HMDs are a real source of eyestrain. Just your eye moving around is enough to screw up the focus on units with very small display elements.
Retinal projection systems work by using detailed knowledge of the lens system of your eye to beam pixels at different parts of the cornea in a way that sort of bypasses the natural function of the lens system. The projector is far too close for the eye to focus. If you could, you'd find the projector nothing more than a tiny light that occupies only a small point of your vision. RPs work by being way out of focus (so they appear large in your field of vision) and achieving their sharpness by using the parallax errors as a feature - something that can only be done with small, tightly controlled laser beams.
A contact lens display system would require the ability to emit thousands of precisely aimed beams or plane waves. At the cornea, the location of the emitters is almost irrelevant. If they emitted spherical waves (as LEDs tend to do), the patch of light from each emitter would span a large part of the entire retina. The 7x8 display in TFA would appear as a 7x8 Photoshop image subject to something like a Gaussian blur of a radius close to the size of the entire image (but on a much larger canvas).
That's where holography comes in. To avoid needing detailed knowledge of the eye, the holographic system uses millions of simple emitters programmed to effectively generate the required plane waves through constructive and destructive interference. No extra lens system is required.
The computational power might be a wee challenge, though. Otherwise the holographic contact lens system is elegant in its simplicity.
Blancmange
... while you're driving?
And those "smart enough to tell them where it's going to work" won't necessarily recommend only using the centre of the eye.
I used to do a short work in a lab doing cochlear implant (cybernetic ears to restore hearing to deaf people). But the staff had a lot of contacts with teams working on retinal implant (cybernetic eyes to restore sight to blind people).
The retinal implant people, for various reasons (namely trying to find if the implant grid should only cover the high-resolution fovea region, or if the grid could cover a larger region), have made test to see if the human could be trained to read text using off-center (lower resolution) sight :
They discovered that, in fact, with proper training, although the resolution is lower, we *COULD* read texts that are projected onto a slightly more peripheral region.
Thus, with proper training, the central high resolution part of the sight could be kept for look to the outside "real-reality" world, and the region around that could be used to transmit informations using the lenses display.
---
A completely different solution could be designing some position sensing technology into the lenses (either the lenses are able to tell their own position themselves, or the external controller that provide the data wirelessely could track the eye-ball motion based on their surface texture (think "trackball" but using the blood vessel pattern, instead of the usual IR-sensitive painting on the trackball). Thus the lense-display could change to display different stuff depending on where the wearer is looking at.
The current bulkier head-mounted displays (virtual reality helmet) can do it : some of them offer a software to display a "virtual desktop" the screen resolution is bigger than the HMD, and the HMD only shows the portion at which the user is currently looking at. The only current problem is that the eyeball is capable of very fast motions and the lag will be a limiting factor.
The technique will probably only become efficient when the lenses get the capability to track their own motion and display the correct sub-part of the complete virtual frame.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When I read this, I instantly thought of my eyeballs catching Malware and not being able to see anything but online casinos and hot young singles, even when I closed my eyes.
Thats the sort of thing that send people insane.... I mean more insane.
Read my blog you know you want to
The Terminator was a machine, right? OK, so we're supposed to believe that when his non-visual sensors collected information, they converted it into text, then rendered the text in the periphery of his visual field, where it was OCR'd by his visual interpreter back into useable data. Does that make sense to anyone?
It's almost like we're supposed to think that inside the Terminator, there is a little guy who's "looking at" all this information. But that's not how people work, and that's also not how robots work. There is no "inside person" who looks at the data that the senses receive. That's what Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater, and it really is a silly idea when you think about it: It's based on an incoherent analogy in which our sense organs "project" a sensory movie for our consciousness to "see." But our consciousness is not separate from the content of the sensory experience. Consciousness just consists of our expeiences.
The same would be true of machines, even truly conscious machines.
oled +"optical focusing" -"focus on" -"focus world" -"focusing more"
You're not supposed to admit that on Slashdot!
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
...but should something like this ever come into common use, how long until someone figures out how to pump advertising through these things?
http://www.davidjarvis.ca/essays/daycorder.shtml
The future is coming much, much faster than I envisioned in late 2007.
Potentially interesting. Here are some possible problems: (1) How do you 'look away'? (2) Neural pathways will learn to ignore persistent images - try staring at the same point for a long time; everything turns grey! (3) Focus and resolution problems (4) Expense of replacement. (5) Social weirdness when people see something funny with your eye. (6) Safety as vision is compromised. (7) Lack of privacy as people can see your display.
Imagine if you could use these to get a front row view from the back row. Then why would anyone pay 10 times as much for a front row seat? Sports arenas and concert halls would feel the biggest hit from this.
Of course, the places I'd expect a zoom feature to be used the most are the beach and the nudie bar.