Electronic Contact Lenses Give Superhuman Vision

Always wanted superhuman vision? How about having the Internet displayed in your eyes on the go? Engineers at the University of Washington have created a “safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights”. Thats right, circuits and lights in your contact lenses.

“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.” The results were presented today at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ international conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems by Harvey Ho, a former graduate student of Parviz’s now working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif. Other co-authors are Ehsan Saeedi and Samuel Kim in the UW’s electrical engineering department and Tueng Shen in the UW Medical Center’s ophthalmology department.

“People may find all sorts of applications for it that we have not thought about. Our goal is to demonstrate the basic technology and make sure it works and that it’s safe,” said Parviz, who heads a multi-disciplinary UW group that is developing electronics for contact lenses.

What other uses does this gadget have? According to the press release, “Video-game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restricting their range of motion. And for communications, people on the go could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see.”

These lenses have been tested on rabbits and after 20 minutes of use have showed no adverse health effects. It was tough to build the lenses because devices that were safe biologically are delicate while toxic and rough devices are needed to create electrical circuits.

It could also be coming sooner than you think

A full-fledged display won’t be available for a while, but a version that has a basic display with just a few pixels could be operational “fairly quickly,” according to Parviz.