Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens/0

by tsestrich • 17 years ago

67 37 17 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

tsestrich2• 17 years ago

The thought of putting a tinted contact in my eye to change my eye color still makes me nervous... jeeze.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

Seriously, can we just get this in glasses instead? I don't like contacts in the first place.

warfangle2• 17 years ago

Concur. With the latest advances in laser projection (see: Microvision's pico projector), it's only a matter of time before we see low-cost see-through HUD glasses. Add a small cam on the bridge for image recognition, and you've got pretty much Terminator vision.

Let me expand on that a little bit, though, so I'm not misunderstood: use the cam for image recognition, sure. But instead of piping the cam image to the projector, simply use it to map the augmented reality elements (visual tags like addresses, direction-path, and so forth) directly to the projector so they line up correctly with what you actually see through the lens. Add a digital zoom pip for when you want some far-off detail up close, I suppose...

clistctrl• 17 years ago

yeah it seems like it would be reducing the scope of problems by orders of magnitude. The thing about heat makes me stomach hurt, maybe unlikely... but i don't want to take a chance of burning my cornea!!

elcron2• 17 years ago

I switched to contacts from glasses a few months ago, the first few weeks were by far the worst. You get used to it (or at least I did).

DTrejo• 17 years ago

Yeah, eventually you get to the point where you can put in both contacts in about 30 seconds without a mirror. It's cool how different that is from when I first got them, when it took me as much as 10 minutes and a mirror.

IsaacL• 17 years ago

Agreed, though you make them sound a lot worse than they are.

For me, getting contact lenses was one of the best things I ever did, and liked them as soon as I tried them on. I hadn't seen my own reflection without glasses from a distance in over 10 years. I'd forgotten what it was like to have decent peripheral vision. They gave me a +2 boost to confidence, purely for vanity reasons.

They were annoying to get in at first, though that was the only real issue. Once you get the trick of it (for me, getting over squeamishness about touching my eyes), it's generally between 5 and 30 seconds.

I know glasses are more convenient (to put on - you don't have to constantly clean contacts throughout the day, and they're less prone to getting lost) - and I like having both. Glasses are to lenses as slippers are to shoes - something I wear when I first wake up for convenience.

I'd been put off getting contacts for years, since I hated things being near my eyes, however I now recommend them to all my bespectacled friends. Also, I find it easier to imagine tech like this article as contacts rather than glasses - contacts are much more like an extension of your body.

drp• 17 years ago

This is straight out of Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End

rrival• 17 years ago

"We’re starting with a simple product, a contact lens with a single light source, and we aim to work up to more sophisticated lenses that can superimpose computer-generated high-resolution color graphics on a user’s real field of vision."

Reading this in a non-fiction context is so exciting.

onreact-com• 17 years ago

Soon enough people using this or more advanced features will bump into you while seemingly looking at you.

jamesk23• 17 years ago

How about skipping the contact lens altogether and using Lasik to etch a conductive surface like circuits onto the cornea itself. It's bio circuitry via laser lithography.

Always on augmented reality.

ben_straub• 17 years ago

But unfortunately irreversible, and non-upgradeable. When things improve on a Moore's-law curve, you don't want to make a permanent commitment.

jamesk23• 17 years ago

Hey, if Dr. Tattoff can remove tattos with a laser somebody will make rewritable lasers like DVD-RW! Maybe not infinite rewrites but it's possible.

Anyone see Blade Runner? There was a chinese guy who is the eyeball making specialist.

Recently I saw a story that scientists are growing livers for transplant. I'd like an eyeball upgrade. Maybe one that doesn't fatigue as easily as my default parts.

jodrellblank• 17 years ago

You'll regret it when it's hacked to display adverts.

jamesk23• 17 years ago

Yeah but a free adwords model would be wickedly popular.

Maybe Google Augment or gAugment

tsestrich2• 17 years ago

In reality, I have a hard time imagining that anyone would be able to distinguish anything meaningful from a display on a contact lens. That's like suggesting that you could read a printed word on a contact lens today. You wouldn't be able to focus on something that is directly on your eyeball.

I think in addition to the technical challenge of actually getting something like this working in a contact lens, the issue of physically being able to make use of such a device needs to be addressed.

To those suggesting a pair of glasses be used instead, I think this is a more practical suggestion for both reasons (the biological and technical). If I try really hard I'm barely able to focus on something as close as my glasses.

mcantor• 17 years ago

FTA: "By now you’re probably wondering how a person wearing one of our contact lenses would be able to focus on an image generated on the surface of the eye. After all, a normal and healthy eye cannot focus on objects that are fewer than 10 centimeters from the corneal surface. The LEDs by themselves merely produce a fuzzy splotch of color in the wearer’s field of vision. Somehow the image must be pushed away from the cornea. One way to do that is to employ an array of even smaller lenses placed on the surface of the contact lens. Arrays of such microlenses..."

tjmc• 17 years ago

I get the sense they underestimate how hard it will be to get the optics right for that in a contact lens. It might be worthwhile to forget all the electronics to begin with and just focus (no pun intended) on making a static figure viewable via microlenses and then build from there.

Another issue is that contact lenses need to breath. They admit in the article that gas permeability is affected as features are added to the lens, so I'd think glasses would be a safer option.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

Most expensive contact lens ever.

albemuth2• 17 years ago

I've recently started running with a heart rate monitor, angry that it doesn't display bpm and a redline alert allá FPS

rms• 17 years ago

Welcome to the future, my friends.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Don't forget with dual contacts we also have 3-D capabilities.

3-D, high-resolution, virtual-reality-mapped information, games, communications.

This is going to be a very cool technology to check back with in five or ten years.

wlievens• 17 years ago

I so terribly want this. Even in ordinary glasses it would be awesome. Where can I get one? :-)

Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

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