Contact lenses were originally designed to correct poor vision, all while offering a viable alternative to huge coke-bottle glasses.
However, it’s become increasingly common over the last several years for individuals to wear contacts for aesthetic reasons as well, such as altering eye color.
Researchers from Belgium are taking this concept a step further by embedding LCD displays directly into the contact lenses. Currently prototype lenses feature a curved LCD screen that displays only basic graphics. Nevertheless, future versions with extensive pixel coverage should allow for a wide range of interesting possibilities.
Once the pixels cover the entire lens, you could transform regular glasses into sunglasses, “pick” an eye color for the day, or display simple images.
One tidbit worth noting is that the graphics produced by the prototype is for aesthetic purposes only. Any symbols projected on the LCD would be too close to your eye to focus, so you wouldn’t see it. Meaning, you can’t use these particular LCD-equipped contact lenses for wearable computing, as cool is that would be.
However, we have covered other prototype contact lens capable of rendering data to facilitate Terminator-style vision.
