Bedford Eye Care Centre | Drs. Mandelman, Dobson, Cox & Parkash | Associates in Optometry | Sunnyside Mall | Bedford, NS

Video eyewear is not new. Products such as the Vuzix Wrap range of eyeglasses  – or “augmented reality eyewear” as Vuzix calls ‘em – have been around for a while and let you watch 2D and 3D content anywhere, anytime.

But things could soon be taken to the next level. A team at the University of Washington, led by Professor Babak Parviz, have created a prototype wireless contact lens display. Their research was recently published in the  Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering. Here’s a section of the abstract:

We present the design, construction and in vivo rabbit testing of a wirelessly powered contact lens display. The display consists of an antenna, a 500 × 500 µm2 silicon power harvesting and radio integrated circuit, metal interconnects, insulation layers and a 750 × 750 µm2 transparent sapphire chip containing a custom-designed micro-light emitting diode with peak emission at 475 nm, all integrated onto a contact lens. The display can be powered wirelessly from ~1 m in free space and ~2 cm in vivo on a rabbit. The display was tested on live, anesthetized rabbits with no observed adverse effect.

Basically, the lens consists of a collection of nanoscale components including an LED light and an antenna that wirelessly collects both power and the data that is to be displayed. The report lists some possible uses for the lenses:

A display with a single controllable pixel could be used in gaming, training, or giving warnings to the hearing impaired. We also believe it is possible to develop systems with better resolution, color, range and computing power. Displays with a handful of pixels could be used to provide directional information, and displays with hundreds of pixels used to read short emails or text messages.

I have to say, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of these Terminator-style lenses – nor the fact that they were tested on anesthetized bunnies (poor little guys). Were the lenses to have a medical purpose – helping the blind to see, for example – then I’d have no problem with them at all. But I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to stick things in our eyes simply so that we can read emails and watch TV on the subway during the morning commute (sure, the report says the lenses could be used to provide warnings to the hearing impaired, but there are other ways of doing that). And would you really want your kids to have a wireless antenna directly on their eye at a time when schools are dismantling wireless networks due to health concerns? Whether you believe that wireless is a health hazard or not, is it a risk you’d be willing to take?