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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.
I highly doubt they planned putting the overlays anywhere but the center of the eye. If they're intelligent enough to make the thing, I'd have to assume they have someone there smart enough to tell them where it's going to work. ;)
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
I believe TFA was referring to placing peripheral components such as wireless reception on the part of the lens that is not used by the eye for viewing.
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!"
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
You're confusing two different phenomena. The blind spot from the optic nerve is not in the center of the eye. The reason for the astronomers trick is due to the distribution of rods (brightness receptors) and cones (color rectors) in the eye. There are more cones at the center of the retina, but the more sensitive rods are distributed more peripherally.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The optic nerve does not exit at the dead center of the eye; the blind spot, where it connects, is to the side of the center. But the center of the eye has the highest concentration of cones, which gives us colour vision. To the sides the rods are more common, these have better sensitivity, but are only registering the amount of illumination, not the colour. Thus an astronomer who is searching for faint objects in the sky is better of looking to the side of the object, using the rods of the retina, than trying to see the objects in colour with the cones, as they are less sensitive to light.
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.
Even adult brains have quite a bit of flexibility when exposed to additional or replaced sensory information. It might take some training, but there's no fundamental biological reason why adding artificial sensors to our own biological senses couldn't be handled by the brain.
The Goatse virus for bionic vision.
Damn it man, you closely dogded a 7-digit UID, and you DARE to try to talk some sense into a 4-digit UID? He knows almost 3 orders of magnitude more than you! I bet those scientists in question don't even HAVE an account on slashdot!
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Sir, that would imply that CmdrTaco is a deity among men. I will not stand for such heresy!
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