Scientists reveal bionic eye prototype

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-07/latest-bionic-eye-prototype-unveiled-in-victoria/4741190

by apapli • 13 years ago

36 13 13 years ago

abc.net.au

Hitchhiker• 13 years ago

This is freaking awesome..

apapli• 13 years ago

What a brilliant gift - aiming to give sight to the blind. It would be wonderful if it could stay out of commercial hands and be distributed as far as possible.

mhb• 13 years ago

Like cell phones.

femto• 13 years ago

That wasn't the universal response to cochlear implants. Some viewed their deafness as part of their identity, and not a disease to be cured.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant#Controversy_i...

leknarf• 13 years ago

The best way to distribute this device as far as possible would be to get it in skilled commercial hands. The creators should profit from giving sight to the blind. This sort of technology is a perfect example of wealth creation: the purchaser gains the ability to see and the creator gets money. Everyone wins.

I hope the creators become very, very rich. I hope they become so rich that someone else decides to compete by creating BionicEye 2.0.

userulluipeste• 13 years ago

...but I thought this technology is supposed to appear only hundreds of years from now!

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

quux• 13 years ago

This is awesome. But I wonder what it must be like to be able to see, even with your eyes closed.

What I mean is, I imagine that it may be a bit overwhelming to a new user to suddenly be getting visual input. A simple solution would be adding a blink sensor to the glasses. When the wearer closes her eyes for longer than just a blink, shut off the video.

Seems like an intuitive UI, since the instinctive thing to do with too much visual input is the shut your eyes. Even if you're blind I imagine.

epenn• 13 years ago

I'll save my full accolades for when I hear about the results of the first human trial, but I think this is an amazing idea and I really hope it works how they expect. More importantly, we are now one step closer to turning me into Robocop.

legitsource• 13 years ago

Maybe they can skip the first segment of the Robocop story for me. I'm okay with losing the parts I don't need through a nice, clean, anesthetized surgical procedure instead of through violent crime.

yuvalyonigalor• 13 years ago

so cool

ryusage• 13 years ago

That implant seems like a pretty serious surgery, though. Hopefully the trials go well and they get this figured out without too many mistakes.

IAmAI343• 13 years ago

A person receiving this implant will be able to receive more than just visual input from the world. He could receive input from the internet, or a virtual reality world. I imagine this is the first step of us moving to the net.

sukuriant• 13 years ago

They've been working on this for a while in different forms. It's awesome to see them at or near a point where it can be mass produced instead of experimental. I'm excited for it, and where the future could carry it forward: color vision, higher resolution, and so on. It's very exciting :)

Scientists reveal bionic eye prototype

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