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Contact Lens Displays
By john | February 3, 2008
I’m a little late in posting this, but a few weeks ago there were a number of stories out about bionic contact lenses being developed at the University of Washington. These are something that have been common in science fiction for some time now, but it’s great to see this becoming reality. I will certainly be the first to sign up to get some of these once there’s something available for humans.
I’ll be interested to see how these “bionic” contact lenses end up being used. Clearly they’ll be used as a heads-up display and for augmented reality, but it will be amazing to see other uses that arise. I’m also interested in how the engineers working on this will overcome several technical challenges. In my mind, these include the following:
- Power. The article states that the devices will be power by a combination of RF power and solar cells. In my mind, that’s certainly easier said than done. Would be nice if somehow you could “recharge” them by moving your eyes, or power them through the body’s liquids (such as tears) in some way.
- Communications. How do you transfer data wirelessly to/from the lenses? Beats me
- Heat. How do you keep the lenses from heating up and impacting the wearer’s eyeball?
- Interface. How do you control what is displayed? Clearly you would ideally have some sort of mind control, but that’s a ways off. A multi-modal input using voice and gesture recognition would is probably most likely.