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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."
This is way better than having to hold your iPhone in front of you all the time...
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Here's an illustration that explains it all in a glance.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Now, throw in a TrackIR-like system, and we can 100% totally immerse ourselves inside a virtual reality PC. No more monitors that have limited field of views etc. Also, imagine the military and civilian aspects - how a terminator can overlay regional information like that of the new iPhone app - but now it's in your eyes.
But they're gonna have to figure out a) how to power it and b) how to transmit the data to these devices. That is true tech challenge.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Can I just get a contact lens with cross-hairs in it?
Why yes. I do play Quake III Arena often. Why do you ask?
I'd be happy just to have a usable interface in a pair of normal glasses (non-correcting).
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
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.
My eyes get tired now from looking intently at a screen for hours each day, imagine the new ailments that can arise from such an invention! This reminds me of a Mad Magazine parody of the Six Million Dollar Man, where his targeting crosshairs blocked what he was looking at, begging the question - how do you turn it off? On the upside, you could browse the internet, send messages, play games and watch movies in perfect privacy. It could allow more taboo segments of the entertainment industry a legitimate platform. Videodrome anyone?
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?)
The girl (or boy) with kaleidoscope eyes.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Divert 10% of the incoming light to a recorder, and the wearer will never notice. Put the sensors on the outside face of some of the opaque lens components. Or put them around the periphery. There's no way you're going to do AR without a way to detect and analyze the "R" that you're "A"ing, anyhow.
Why go for an augmented reality when you can have a demented reality?
This guy's the limit!
They've put a single LED in a contact lens, so now we have Augmented Reality.
Hmm... Inertial Damper... *draws a huge arrow on his motorcycle schematic pointing to the front forks*
Heinsenberg compensator = Registered ECC setup for RAM.
Zero-point module: processor with no floating point instructions.
SIG: HUP
I really can't wait for the first hacker who manages to hack someone else's lens to output an extremely bright light to the wearer...
so that he has to remove those lens, because the natural reflex of closing the eye is totally useless!
When you're arrested by the cops: "my lenses were hacked! i really didn't see that stop sign!"
Or: "cause of death: blinded by his lenses while driving"
Such an interesting future is coming towards us!
I keep seeing people go on and on about Torchwood doing this, but this has always been a part of Ghost in the Shell, hopefully reality doesn't end up like GiTS because the "cyberbrains" make Win 95 seem secure.
Forget a contact on my eye - replace the whole eyeball. Give me low light, infrared, light reduction, bloom compensation, microscope and telescope functions, facial recognition, recording, playback, computer display link, etc.
Pretty much everyone needs glasses by 40 anyway, why not just get new eyes when you're 18?
I know we're a long way off from being able to plug a camera directly into the optic nerve, but when that day comes I'm up for it.
... goatse.cx to a whole new level.
I love the idea, but having conducted many eye-tracking sessions I think that there are a number of basic challenges that the contact-lens implementation would need to overcome. First, contacts drift all over the cornea. It's really quite disconcerting to watch, especially when you've got obvious markers like vanity-coloring for irises. Station-keeping over the pupil would require technology that's not mentioned here. Alternatively, you might monitor the portion of the contact that's positioned over the pupil at any given moment using photocells on the underside to catch light reflected off the retina, but then you'll need a bigger display and use up valuable real estate. Second, similarly and perhaps even more importantly, orientation maintenance. If there was a good way for contact orientation to be maintained, bifocal contact lenses would be a reality already. Instead you encounter bizarre stopgaps like a reading lens in one eye and a distance lens in the other. Third, eyes are a fairly disgusting environment. Crud on regular contacts doesn't seem to impede vision, but the delicate electronics in a device like this might object to working in a wet, salty, bacteria-ridden setting unless very carefully insulated. Nothing bad about reaching for the dream, but I'll take a pair of prescription Virtual Light-style glasses while we're waiting.
One problem with this is that contact lenses float on your eye and are not stationary. This is a serious problem, because to keep a constant orientation, you'll either need to constantly rotate any light emitters to stay in the same place (probably not possible), or weight the contact lens as is currently done with astigmatic lenses (not a great solution).
Apart from this, contact lenses tear, break, get lost, etc... At the moment, my soft lenses cost $5 apiece. If one tears, gets lost, or something else equally destructive, it's not a problem. If the same lens cost $1000, that would be a much bigger problem. And I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. If you make the lenses soft, they'll degrade quickly (as current soft lenses do). If you make them hard, then they will fall, get scratched, and the like over the long term.