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Augmented Reality In a Contact Lens
Toe, The writes "Bionanotechnology researcher Babak A Parviz writes about his research toward producing a computer interface in a contact lens. At the moment, they have only embedded a single LED, but they foresee a much more complex interface such as detailed in Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. Such lenses potentially could also read human bio-information from the eye, providing medical information on the order of what is now taken from blood tests, but on a continuous basis. An example would be monitoring glucose levels for diabetics. The author states that, 'All the basic technologies needed to build functional contact lenses are in place,' and details what refinements and advances will be necessary to bring this technology to reality."
Another inevitable function of this contact lens is recording video. Everything you see passes through this lens, so you will be able to record everything you see (except, of course, for dreams and hallucinations).
It would be like Tivo for your life.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Blinks. Leech kinetic energy from the eyelid. Teeny-tiny stick-on magnets go on the outside of your eyelid; they'll be the next fashion statement. Every time you blink, it induces a current pulse in the lens pickup coils.
For that matter, it might be possible to collect energy from saccades and other natural eye movements. That's potentially a higher-res and lower-latency method for eye-tracking than cameras, which you'll need for AR, and if you can harvest energy to boot, so much the better!
I don't have the physics/EE chops to run the numbers, but I'll bet you'd get more power this way than from a "solar cell module". (Who wants to keep their eyes wide open and directed toward a bright light source?)
They've put a single LED in a contact lens, so now we have Augmented Reality.