2011-11-24

Bionic Contact Lens Prototype

Bionic contact lens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Bionic contact lenses are being developed to provide a virtual display that could have a variety of uses from assisting the visually impaired to the video game industry.[1] The device will have the form of a conventional contact lens with added bionics technology.[2] The lens will eventually have functional electronic circuits and infrared lights to create a virtual display.[citation needed]
Babak Parviz, a University of Washington assistant professor of electrical engineering is quoted as saying "Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside.”[3]

Successful test for electronic contact lens | ZDNet

Researchers at the University of Washington and Aalto University, Finland, have built a prototype electronic contact lens and demonstrated its safety by testing it on live rabbit eyes.

The researchers report no signs of adverse side effects in a study published today in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering,

“We have demonstrated the operation of a contact lens display powered by a remote radiofrequency transmitter in free space and on a live rabbit,” said lead researcher, Babak Parviz.



One Per Cent: Electronic contact lens displays pixels on the eyes

The test lens was powered remotely using a 5-millimetre-long antenna printed on the lens to receive gigahertz-range radio-frequency energy from a transmitter placed ten centimetres from the rabbit's eye. To focus the light on the rabbit's retina, the contact lens itself was fabricated as a Fresnel lens - in which a series of concentric annular sections is used to generate the ultrashort focal length needed.

They found their lens LED glowed brightly up to a metre away from the radio source in free space, but needed to be 2 centimetres away when the lens was placed in a rabbit's eye and the wireless reception was affected by body fluids. All the 40-minute-long tests on live rabbits were performed under general anaesthetic and showed that the display worked well - and fluroescence tests showed no damage or abrasions to the rabbit's eyes after the lenses were removed.



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