The future is always portrayed in movies and TV as a world where retinal scans get us into buildings, or augmented reality images in an individual’s field of vision (think Terminator).
Taking a cue from this future technology, researchers at the University of Washington are working on a pair of contact lenses with built-in LED arrays to display images directly on top of your retinas.
The normal clear lens will sit directly on top of your retina to display an image in perfect focus, powered from a beltpack that transmits electricity wirelessly to a resonating antenna within the lens to display an image.
The only scary thing is since the content is transmitted directly to the lens on your retina, you won’t be able to close your eyes or look away to avoid particular scenes in a movie or avoid commercials.
On the other hand, this type of technology has huge implications for the medical community with real-time speech translations for the hearing impaired or vital sign monitoring like glucose levels for diabetics.
The researchers aren’t quite there yet though, only having achieved red and blue pixels within the LED display. Once they figure out how to make the green pixels, we’ll be ready for full color displays.
Talk about a good way to zone out in class.
My question is, which looks less lame, a battery beltpack or 3D glasses?
(Via New Scientist & Dvice)
