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Aussie Government Offers $40M To Build a Bionic Eye
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government is keen to replicate the success of the Cochlear Implant (bionic ear) by throwing AU$50M (US$40M) of funding at the development of a bionic eye. Bionic eyes have been trialed with some success in the UK — with recipients able to detect senses of shape and space, but very little detail."
WANT
Fortunately, I was already digging up Jaime Sommers' corpse for other uses.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
we need a brain interface for said eye which we already have. We call it a CCD camera.
They're using their grammar skills there.
$40 million USD over 4 years is tiny! Wouldn't it be better to structure it as some sort of X-prize or some sort of incentive system predicated on success? I know it's hard to convince people to pop in a bionic eye so some stranger can tweak it but coming up with some parameters that could be objectively measured without sticking it into someone's body might be doable. X-prize type challenges can trigger research efforts in multiples of the actual prize itself.
X-prize or not, $40 million USD over 4 years is not going to go very far.
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It's already possible to do really low quality artificial sight.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Seeing+Tongue-a078681631
As I see it, the main hurdle is just getting a eye hooked up with a decent amount of bandwidth (there are issues with power supply, nonrejection, et cetera, but those seem less difficult). The human brain is really good at creating interpreters for new inputs.
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For shame USA. Our 70's TV future predictions are not panning out. Looks like the first Bionic Man/Woman will be saying cheesy things like "G'day".
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. - Adam Smith (1723-90)
Well, this would be of direct benefit to potentially millions of blind people, even if it's very crude. Fuel efficient cars are of benefit to many times more people but in a less direct way.
you would have left after taxes?
Probably not worth the effort.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
My understanding has always been that doing things like eye transplants are currently impossible, because the eye directly integrates with the brain -- the retina blends into the optic nerve which blends into the brain. As Neal Stephenson said in Snow Crash (paraphrased horribly), if you look into someone's eyes, you're actually looking into their brain. Our current level of understanding and experience with neurobiology precludes brain transplants, which in turn precludes eye transplants.
Until we have that kind of knowledge, I don't see how any kind of eye replacement, whether via transplant or some kind of bionic prosthesis, will be possible. Of course, IANANB (I Am Not A Neurobiologist).
Supposedly there are 50,000 blind people in Australia.
http://www.bca.org.au/natpol/statistics/2005_Blind_Stats_num_and_perc_by_State_Territory_CERA.htm
$50,000,000 breaks down to $1000/blind person.
I'd guess that the cost in social services to help blind people probably exceeds $1000/yr per person (i.e. well over $50,000,000). Therefore it would make economic sense to cure blindness.
I disagree. A bionic eye is worth much more than a car that gets 100mpg.
/day.
1) Economical diesel cars already get close to that, so if car owners become really interested, it will be built without the need of a prize. If you go pure biodiesel you might even be able to meet the 200g/mile emissions requirement if it is a "net calculation".
2) A car that gets 100mpg from fossil fuels might end up a mere curiosity if we ever shift big time from fossil fuels to something else other than biofuels.
In contrast a working bionic eye is going to be useful for as long as humans (or other similar creatures) want eyes.
An efficient biofuel car is useful, but it by itself will not deal with the problem of starving out the poor - because as long as the rich are many times richer than the numerous poor, they can afford to pay a lot more to feed their cars so they wouldn't feel the pressure. It would likely need external regulation to make them care.
Here's some rough math:
Recommended energy per person: 2000 kcal = 8.36 megajoules
1 litre of vegetable oil = 34MJ - or about the daily energy allowance for 4 people.
1 litre of vegetable => approximately USD1.
How much would a rich (e.g. anyone who can afford a car) person be willing to pay per day to feed his car? USD2? If he can afford to pay more than 8 poor people, the 8 poor people are going to get less food assuming we don't keep converting forests to farmland.
Fixed that for you.
Would you swap one of your eyes for a car that went 100 MPG? Didn't think so.
I dunno... sure we can rebuild him, but then that leads to the Bionic Woman, and we all know that inevitably means we'll have Fembots trying to take over the world... with their faces flipping off, and those freaky eyeballs on circuit board faces... Shudder!
http://www.beanleafpress.com
You ignore another, more far reaching benefit to bionic eyes. There is a lot of information in the world that we, as humans, simply cannot access at this time, such as the most obvious examples of IR/UV light. When the technology is in its infancy we may not get as much of a return on the investment as we would for other developments, however, as it progresses it could open up entirely new realms of senses.
Wouldn't it be nice to see the sun set in a full spectrum, or have a monitor built into your eye, or maybe even have 360 degree field of vision by adding a few more cameras? On the other hand, a 100 MPG car would certainly beat what I'm driving right now, but in the end the monopolies that rule the industry would still raise prices to keep up their profit margins, and we would still be drilling for oil, albeit a bit slower.
Steve Irwin, crocodile hunter. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic Australian. Steve Irwin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster... crikier!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
We need Bionic Six and Robocop references to balance things out. And we've gone this long without a Borg reference, or someone demanding not only vision from bionic eyes but lasers? This isn't the Slashdot I know...
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
Cops Are Theives
Fuck the police.
Already a song by NWA.
and... wouldn't you know that it is also directly nice to thousands of people as well and would have an immediate positive impact on medical "tourism" to Australia. Developing a more efficient vehicle only puts Australia on par with the rest of the world... but wait, they pretty much are anyway--developing a better bionic eye than the UK puts them ahead and boosts their economy.
If they could make it take up half my face and the eye part glow red like the Terminator, that would definitely be an added bonus.
Too bad the outlook on such a thing is that if it's invented it will only be long after I've died of old age. Stupid meat shelf life...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What good is a car to drive you to the strip club if you cannot SEE the strippers when you get there!
...will I be able to fit 2 GPUs on it?
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man still has no depth perception.
According to the TV show it was suppose to be $6 Million for the entire man! No wonder it's taking so long.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Isn't that 34 Million Dollars over budget, or is that in Aussie Dollars?
This proposal has a bit of a backstory to it.
Last year, the newly-elected Australian government held something called the "2020 summit". The idea was to bring together 1000 of Australia's "best and brightest" - think academics, businesspeople, a smattering of celebrities including Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett (for the arts subtrack) to discuss ideas for Australia;s future. After two days of discussion, they came up with a list of suggestions.
Unfortunately, the government didn't like most of them. Some of them were genuinely bad, but a lot the government didn't like because they would have required bullet-biting.. But to show that the whole exercise is worthwhile, the government has seized on the easy, cheap, uncontroversial tidbits and is promoting them heavily. Like this bionic eye.
While it won't be of much interest to Slashdot, another one likely to get publicized over the next little while is the proposal to build a research center to record the environmental expertise of the various Aboriginal peoples of Australia. Not that it's a bad idea, but it's the kind of thing that a government can do with pocket change.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
You can do that (theoretically) with contact lenses. I want zoom and recording.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't they know? In the 70's it only cost $6M to build a whole bionic man. It has already been done!!!
Thx for the correction. Who re-built him?
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. - Adam Smith (1723-90)