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Contact Lenses With Infrared Vision?

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-the-better-to-see-you-with dept.

Orlando (12257) writes "A story on Singularity Hub reports that "Researchers at the University of Michigan, led by electrical engineer Zhaohui Zhong, have devised a way to capture the infrared spectrum without requiring the cooling that makes infrared goggles so cumbersome." The method uses graphene and could one day lead to ultra light weight infrared vision technology."

8 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Not practical as contact lenses by rebelwarlock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Infrared essentially blocks out normal vision. While this may be useful as wearable computing, it wouldn't be useful if you had to poke around in your eye every time you needed to switch back to normal vision.

    1. Re:Not practical as contact lenses by Scutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Exactly. I'm not sure why it needs to jump directly to contacts. Why not just regular sunglasses? The article even says "...that makes infrared goggles so cumbersome." So, great! Now you can pack all of that down into a standard pair of glasses that you can easily put on and take off, even when your fingers are filthy from crawling in the dirt during combat.

      --

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    2. Re:Not practical as contact lenses by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

      For videogames, what you need is X-ray vision. The ability to see the electric signals in the LCD gril before they hit the actual pixels will give you an advantage of several milliseconds compared to your opponents. The same principle applies to Monster cables' gold-plated, titanium-coated, oxygen-free optical cables which give you pure digital audio, free of data which are not zeros or ones.

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    3. Re:Not practical as contact lenses by Guppy06 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I can see a business model where you'd sell these glasses from the backs of comic books.

  2. Utterly misleading post. by queazocotal · · Score: 5, Informative

    A) Thermal imagers have not required cooling since approximately 1980.
    (for other than extremely specialised applications.

    B) Having a sensor does not magically mean it can be used in a contact lens.

    You need electronics, LEDs, and focussing optics in order to get it into the eye in a coherent image.

  3. Re:Cool? by bobbied · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, we just blink and the TV channel will change?

    No, but you will be blinded when using the remote control..

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  4. Re:What will it look like? by kruach+aum · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

    relevant part: "Humans cannot perceive UV light directly since the lens of the eye blocks most light in the wavelength range of 300-400 nm; shorter wavelengths are blocked by the cornea.[18] Nevertheless, the photoreceptors of the retina are sensitive to near UV light and people lacking a lens (a condition known as aphakia) perceive near UV light as whitish blue or whitish-violet, probably because all three types of cones are roughly equally sensitive to UV light, but blue cones a bit more.[19]"

    A new colour, and all you have to do to be able to see it is have no lens.

  5. Re:IR mods for early digital cameras ... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Take off the tinfoil hat. Sony once sold a camcorder with an IR mode that there was some brief controversy about, but that's about it. Lots of hobbyists modify cameras to see IR. Lots of cheaper cameras have crappy filters and pick up quite a bit without modification. Canon specifically sells (or sold, it's quite old now) a version of one of their SLRs without an IR filter. You can buy one for $25 to hook up to your Raspberry Pi.