Soon you could be watching movies on your contact lenses
By Susan Wilson
Contact lenses used to only be for improving sight. Then you could get lenses to change your eye color to match your mood. Now contact lenses have been created that have tiny circuits embedded in the lens. The circuits are expected to eliminate the need for external displays.
Babak Parviz created the circuit embedded contact lenses in his Seattle laboratory. But the circuits alone won’t be enough to actually allow any viewing of beamed in video.
Parviz, is an assistant professor in electrical engineering at the University of Washington. He works with bio-nanotechnology, self-assembly nanofabrication, and micro-electro mechanical systems. All processes used to create the special contact lenses.
The lenses are actually assembled using self-assembly nanofabrication. Metal layers a few nanometers thick are added to thin, transparent, flexible plastic substrates. LEDs about one-third of a millimeter across are added in the same way.
Parviz intends to add tiny LEDs (light emitting diodes) to the lenses to allow pictures, movies, TV, or ebooks to be viewed with the contacts. Creating the right configuration, LED placement and illumination for viewing, is still in the future. Don’t count on picture in picture features anytime soon.
The LEDs require little power to function, which is good, since powering the circuits and LEDs is still something of a mystery. One method under consideration is to use a tiny embedded antenna to receive radio frequency waves to power the lenses. Another method being studied is to embed tiny photovoltaic cells in the lenses.
It will be a while before these contact lenses are ready for prime time. Testing the safety, ease, comfort,and viability of the lenses is still a ways off.
Another issue will be the need to link sound in some way to movies or TV shows seen on the contacts. Will special earphones be needed or special ear implants?
Who knows, by the time these lenses hit the market, implanting them in the eye may be the best alternative. Rather than having external signs and visuals, they may all be projected straight to your eyes. Bionic eyes indeed.
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