Researchers at the University of Washington have recently discovered a way to safely create a contact lens that has a digital display for the wearer to view information, such as the Internet, driving controls (speed, direction, etc), or perhaps even vision enhancements.
The press release from the University of Washington reports that their researchers tested the contact lenses for safety in lab rabbits and have found no adverse affects. With hope, we will soon be able to browse the Internet, watch television (with a bluetooth earpiece perhaps?), view things more clearly, or obtain information about our environments with nothing but our contact lens to help us out.
According to the researchers involved, the lens would display the information superimposed over the wearer's normal view, much like we have seen in the Terminator series and the Bionic Woman.
Even better is that the area outside the pupil could be used to place even more electronics, allowing for further improvements:
"There is a large area outside of the transparent part of the eye that we can use for placing instrumentation," Parviz said. Future improvements will add wireless communication to and from the lens. The researchers hope to power the whole system using a combination of radio-frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens, Parviz said.
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. (Press Release)
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