Tuesday, November 22, 2011

CL for More than Sight and Meds. How about the Super Bowl?


"A new generation of contact lenses that project images in front of the eyes is a step closer after successful animal trials, say scientists," reports the BBC. "The technology could allow wearers to read floating texts and emails or augment their sight with computer-generated images, Terminator-syle. Researchers at Washington University who are working on the device say early tests show it is safe and feasible. But there are still wrinkles to iron out, like finding a good power source. Currently, their crude prototype device can only work if it is within centimetres of the wireless battery. And its microcircuitry is only enough for one light-emitting diode, reports the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering." Read more at BBC.com.

"Engineers from the US and Finland have tested a wireless contact lens featuring a working LED light on a living eye for the first time," according to a post in The Engineer. "Although the proof-of-concept device only contained a single pixel, it could pave the way for lenses that display emails and text messages directly to the wearer’s eyes or provide real-time health monitoring information such as glucose levels. The lens — developed by researchers at Washington and Aalto universities — consists of an antenna that receives power in the form of radio waves, an integrated circuit to store the energy and a transparent sapphire chip containing a single blue LED. One of the key challenges in developing the lens was finding a way to allow the eye to focus on a display so close to it. The human eye cannot resolve images closer than a few centimetres so a contact lens display would normally appear blurry. Washington University researcher Prof Babak Praviz told The Engineer that this problem was overcome using Fresnel lenses — very thin lenses that effectively consist of a series of prisms rather than a single optical element."Read more in The Engineer.

 "The lenses would provide the wearer with ‘info-vision’ – hands-free information updates streamed across your field of vision," according to Metro. "The device currently contains only a single pixel but researchers hope to produce lenses that could be used to display short emails and texts. They could also be used in gaming or navigation systems and may be linked to biosensors in the user’s body to provide up-to-date information on glucose or lactate levels. The contacts, created by researchers in the US and Finland, are thinner and flatter than usual lenses and contain an antenna to accept power wirelessly." Read more in Metro.

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