Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The Potential Future of Bionic CLs

"'If you look at the structure of a contact lens,' says Babak Parviz, University of Washington assistant professor of eleectrical engineering, 'more or less it’s just a polymer that … does vision correction.' Since the group was already working on incorporating micron-scale devices onto unconventional substrates including plastics, he says, 'we saw the opportunity to integrate these on a contact lens.' Parviz adds that much of the micro technology that would have to fit on a contact lens is already available and says, 'To look at the semi-conductor industry and what we have in opto-electronics and micro machines, we already have a lot… (but) one thing we have not done is to put those things on a contact.'" That's the start of an excellent ScienCentral post. "Parviz imagines a whole list of things a supercharged contact lens might do, explaining, 'I can see this exponentially growing and having many, many applications; from lenses that are quote-unquote intelligent and can help the user who’s had a cataract surgery to see better, to amplified vision, to all sorts of gaming applications and interfacing with your iPod and lots of things.'” Read more and watch a QuickTime video.

No comments:

Post a Comment