Electronic Contact Lens promises bionic capabilities for everyone

Taking wireless technologies and the evolution of the UW Contact Lens even further, there’s significant promise of using the contact lens displays in coordinating groups of people to work more effectively in teams, the most likely first up usage for this being for military personnel on the battlefield and for disaster response teams in a crisis where saving time and doing things efficiently means saving lives.

There are many possible uses for virtual displays. Drivers or pilots could see a vehicle's speed projected onto the windshield. Video-game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restricting their range of motion. And for communications, people on the go could surf the Internet on a midair virtual display screen that only they would be able to see.

"People may find all sorts of applications for it that we have not thought about. Our goal is to demonstrate the basic technology and make sure it works and that it's safe," said Parviz, who heads a multi-disciplinary UW group that is developing electronics for contact lenses.

Bionic Zoom Vision

One of the aspects of the UW Contact Lens most likely to capture the imagination of the public is its promise of bionic vision, popularized in mass market science fiction such as the Terminator movie series where Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg character and his cyborg combatants demonstrated the ability to zoom in on distant objects, as did Lee Majors’ character Steve Austin in the Six Million Dollar Man television series.

“Using nanotechnology you can extend the sophistication of the contact lens as far as you like,” says Parviz. “There is interest in including cameras on the contact lens and incorporating other lenses so that, for example, if you were looking at something very small, you would be able to zoom in to get a closer look. Similarly, if something is far away, you would be able to zoom in.”

With an array of lenses wirelessly connected to a wearable computer, there’s obviously the capability of “recording images” says Parviz. We prompt him on the possibility of recording in real time what we see, and he adds that there are many uses for the technology they are developing that have not yet been explored, and indeed, that there are uses they almost certainly haven’t even thought of.

Once again, the military and law enforcement domains are the most likely to pony up the dollars for real-time recording of critical encounters, but the possibilities are almost endless once someone is wearing such a contact lens – could it be that at some point in the future, those “this conversation could be recorded for training purposes” on-hold telephone announcements (warnings) might be applicable to every conversation with a customer service representative?

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