The Bionic Eye

Posted by Harendra on August 27th, 2009

The movie characters in Terminator, Bionic Woman and such character based movies use bionic eyes often to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts that pop into their field of view. These virtual displays find many possible uses like video–game companies can use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without respecting their range of motion. Drivers or pilots can view a vehicle’s speed projected onto the windshield. And in the communications, people on the move can surf the internet on a midair virtual display screen that could only be visible to their eye.

The virtual displays are being proposed more for practical purposes like holographic driving control panels, visual aids to help vision-impaired people and as a way to surf the web on the move. Engineers at the University of Washington have started using manufacture techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible and safe biological contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuits and lights for the first time.

The materials that are safe for use in the body, such as flexible organic materials used in the lenses are delicate is a big challenge in the preparation of the contact lenses. However manufacturing electrical circuits involve inorganic materials, scorching temperature and harmful chemicals.

Keeping all the things aside the researches have built the circuits from layers of metal which are only a few nanometers thick,about one thousandth the width of human hair and constructed LED’s which are one-third of a millimeter across.The basic techniques involved in the manufacturing of these lenses are a micro fabrication technique called self-assembly and the capillary forces. Explaining about the self-assembly, it is a technique in which first the grayish powder of electronic components are sprinkled on to a flexible plastic.The shape of each tiny component dictates which piece it can attach to called self assembly followed by the capillary forces which are forces used in transportation of water in the plants, so these capillary forces pull the tiny components into position.

According to Babak Parviz, head of a multi-disciplinary UW group which is developing electronics for contact lenses, the technique involved in the prototype contact lens can be used on a corrective lens but it does not correct the wearer’s vision.He also said that, “there is a large area outside of the transparent part of the eye that we can use for placing instrumentation, future improvements will add wireless communication ‘to and from’ the lens.Somehow, the researchers hope to power the entire system using a combination of radio-frequency and solar cells placed on the cells”.

The lenses are first tested on rabbits for up to 20min and they are affected and did not show any effects in that time. The device contains an electric circuit as well as a red LED for the display, though it is not completed till now. Parviz said that, “a full-fledged will not be available for a while, but a version that has a basic display with just few pixels could be operational “fairly quickly”.

National Science Foundation and a Technology Gap Innovation Fund from the University of Washington are sponsoring this research.

Random Articles:

Gadgets Post a comment

Leave a Comment