Sunday, January 20, 2008

Contact Lens with Superimposed Displays


Ghost In The Shell is here.

"Engineers at the UW have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights.

"Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside," said Babak Parviz, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering."

This is just too exciting. There are way too many applications for this tech aside from gaming. GPS(me), first-person view of another person(armed forces), image filters/enhancers(everyone), too many, just too many. Any app on the computer could be ported.

But, from comments I read, some people aren't really comfortable with contact lenses. Would certainly gain more acceptance if they did superimposed displays on spectacles instead. (Dennou Coil, anyone?)

Futhermore, in cases when the displays malfunction/get hacked, users can conveniently remove the specs. Sensitive eyes are common too. Eyes sometimes become sensitive from wearing contact lenses 24/7. And then, there's the question of hygiene.
IMO, this is certainly more viable and non-invasive compared to bionic eyes like those in GitS.
It would be nice to have a user interface too. Primitive and currently viable ways would be to tracking eye-movement or blinks. Or we could just implants electrodes into the brain(previous post).

Functionality aside, there's aesthetics to be considered too. Coloured contact lenses no-es, metallic contact lenses FTW.

100% WANT!!!
I don't care whether it makes it into the mainstream market, as long as I get to use them, I'll be more than happy.

1 comment:

Lebam said...

Omg, this is so cool! I'm so getting myself a pair of these babies. Though I'm sure it'd cost a bomb. Shucks ):