I missed this in January, but Nuts and Volts pointed it out to me in this month’s issue: contact lenses with circuits capable of superimposing visual data on the natural stream of light coming into your eye.
The press release displays an interesting journalistic emerging journalistic formula for announcing or describing new technologies: lead with a reference to a user benefit seen in a movie or TV show, say that someday is now that much closer, and talk about the project.
Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes — visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.
Engineers at the University of Washington 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 a very small step toward that goal, but I think it’s extremely promising.”
Anyway, kinda cool.