9 ms·

Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens

67 points by tsestrich 17y ago

tsestrich 17y ago
The thought of putting a tinted contact in my eye to change my eye color still makes me nervous... jeeze.
- DannoHung 17y ago
  Seriously, can we just get this in glasses instead? I don't like contacts in the first place.
  - warfangle 17y ago
    Concur. With the latest advances in laser projection (see: Microvision's pico projector), it's only a matter of time before we see low-cost see-through HUD glasses. Add a small cam on the bridge for image recognition, and you've got pretty much Terminator vision. Let me expand on that a little bit, though, so I'm not misunderstood: use the cam for image recognition, sure. But instead of piping the cam image to the projector, simply use it to map the augmented reality elements (visual tags like addresses, direction-path, and so forth) directly to the projector so they line up correctly with what you actually see through the lens. Add a digital zoom pip for when you want some far-off detail up close, I suppose...
    - mattheww 17y ago
      Multi-pupil gestures? Cross your eyes to zoom out!
      - albemuth 17y ago
        Patent before Apple does!
    - randallsquared 17y ago
      Microvision has been touting those projectors for at least most of a decade now. They're so incredibly awesome, if they work and don't have major drawbacks, that I conclude they don't really work. :(
      - warfangle 17y ago
        They've shown actual products working, most notably at e.g. CES. Wonder why they haven't brought them to market yet? I'm thinking they're still rather expensive to produce.
        randallsquared 17y ago
        If they don't fail in some obvious way (low battery life; heavy or wearing on the ears and nose; risk of damage to the eye; can't produce true color; or something), I'd happily pay thousands of dollars for one, and I can imagine many, many other people would as well, which would help them drive costs down. At first I thought they were holding out for a large contract from the DoD or something, but after this long I just assume there's something critically wrong with them (one of the above), or that the managers are idiots who can fail to profit from having warehouses of gold. :)
  - clistctrl 17y ago
    yeah it seems like it would be reducing the scope of problems by orders of magnitude. The thing about heat makes me stomach hurt, maybe unlikely... but i don't want to take a chance of burning my cornea!!
- elcron 17y ago
  I switched to contacts from glasses a few months ago, the first few weeks were by far the worst. You get used to it (or at least I did).
  - DTrejo 17y ago
    Yeah, eventually you get to the point where you can put in both contacts in about 30 seconds without a mirror. It's cool how different that is from when I first got them, when it took me as much as 10 minutes and a mirror.
    - gjm11 17y ago
      On the other hand, I could put my glasses on in less than 30 seconds without a mirror as soon as I first got them. Of course, they therefore don't give the same sense of accomplishment. (Which is also one of the forces leading people to program in, say, C++, as other people have remarked before.)
      - scott_s 17y ago
        Of course. But with contacts, you don't have anything hanging on your face, and you have better peripheral vision. For me, glasses are better for reading paper and the screen. Contacts are better for everything else. Being able to play various sports without having to choose between worrying about breaking my glasses or being seriously visually impaired is freeing. Even things like running and lifting are so much easier because I don't need to constantly adjust my glasses. And I didn't realize how nice it feels to not have something constantly on my face until I started wearing contacts. There are ups and downs to both glasses and contacts, which is why I wear both during the week and day. But implying that people wear contacts because they feel a sense of accomplishment by putting them in is foolish.
        joezydeco 17y ago
        Swimming without goggles is difficult when wearing contacts. The lenses tend to wash out of the eye (at least for me).
drp 17y ago
This is straight out of Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
rrival 17y ago
"We’re starting with a simple product, a contact lens with a single light source, and we aim to work up to more sophisticated lenses that can superimpose computer-generated high-resolution color graphics on a user’s real field of vision." Reading this in a non-fiction context is so exciting.
- onreact-com 17y ago
  Soon enough people using this or more advanced features will bump into you while seemingly looking at you.
jamesk2 17y ago
How about skipping the contact lens altogether and using Lasik to etch a conductive surface like circuits onto the cornea itself. It's bio circuitry via laser lithography. Always on augmented reality.
- ben_straub 17y ago
  But unfortunately irreversible, and non-upgradeable. When things improve on a Moore's-law curve, you don't want to make a permanent commitment.
  - jamesk2 17y ago
    Hey, if Dr. Tattoff can remove tattos with a laser somebody will make rewritable lasers like DVD-RW! Maybe not infinite rewrites but it's possible. Anyone see Blade Runner? There was a chinese guy who is the eyeball making specialist. Recently I saw a story that scientists are growing livers for transplant. I'd like an eyeball upgrade. Maybe one that doesn't fatigue as easily as my default parts.
    - jerf 17y ago
      As much fun as it is to speculate about the ultimate invincibility of science, I would like to point out that the key to writable and re-writable CDs and DVDs is the dye, not the laser. That after all the selection pressure the eye has gone through, it also happened to be made of a re-writable dye of any sort seems rather improbable.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  You'll regret it when it's hacked to display adverts.
  - jamesk2 17y ago
    Yeah but a free adwords model would be wickedly popular. Maybe Google Augment or gAugment
tsestrich 17y ago
In reality, I have a hard time imagining that anyone would be able to distinguish anything meaningful from a display on a contact lens. That's like suggesting that you could read a printed word on a contact lens today. You wouldn't be able to focus on something that is directly on your eyeball. I think in addition to the technical challenge of actually getting something like this working in a contact lens, the issue of physically being able to make use of such a device needs to be addressed. To those suggesting a pair of glasses be used instead, I think this is a more practical suggestion for both reasons (the biological and technical). If I try really hard I'm barely able to focus on something as close as my glasses.
- mcantor 17y ago
  FTA: "By now you’re probably wondering how a person wearing one of our contact lenses would be able to focus on an image generated on the surface of the eye. After all, a normal and healthy eye cannot focus on objects that are fewer than 10 centimeters from the corneal surface. The LEDs by themselves merely produce a fuzzy splotch of color in the wearer’s field of vision. Somehow the image must be pushed away from the cornea. One way to do that is to employ an array of even smaller lenses placed on the surface of the contact lens. Arrays of such microlenses..."
  - tjmc 17y ago
    I get the sense they underestimate how hard it will be to get the optics right for that in a contact lens. It might be worthwhile to forget all the electronics to begin with and just focus (no pun intended) on making a static figure viewable via microlenses and then build from there. Another issue is that contact lenses need to breath. They admit in the article that gas permeability is affected as features are added to the lens, so I'd think glasses would be a safer option.
tlrobinson 17y ago
Most expensive contact lens ever.
albemuth 17y ago
I've recently started running with a heart rate monitor, angry that it doesn't display bpm and a redline alert allá FPS
rms 17y ago
Welcome to the future, my friends.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
Don't forget with dual contacts we also have 3-D capabilities. 3-D, high-resolution, virtual-reality-mapped information, games, communications. This is going to be a very cool technology to check back with in five or ten years.
wlievens 17y ago
I so terribly want this. Even in ordinary glasses it would be awesome. Where can I get one? :-)

67 points by tsestrich 17y ago

tsestrich 17y ago

The thought of putting a tinted contact in my eye to change my eye color still makes me nervous... jeeze.

DannoHung 17y ago
Seriously, can we just get this in glasses instead? I don't like contacts in the first place.
- warfangle 17y ago
  Concur. With the latest advances in laser projection (see: Microvision's pico projector), it's only a matter of time before we see low-cost see-through HUD glasses. Add a small cam on the bridge for image recognition, and you've got pretty much Terminator vision. Let me expand on that a little bit, though, so I'm not misunderstood: use the cam for image recognition, sure. But instead of piping the cam image to the projector, simply use it to map the augmented reality elements (visual tags like addresses, direction-path, and so forth) directly to the projector so they line up correctly with what you actually see through the lens. Add a digital zoom pip for when you want some far-off detail up close, I suppose...
  - mattheww 17y ago
    Multi-pupil gestures? Cross your eyes to zoom out!
    - albemuth 17y ago
      Patent before Apple does!
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    Microvision has been touting those projectors for at least most of a decade now. They're so incredibly awesome, if they work and don't have major drawbacks, that I conclude they don't really work. :(
    - warfangle 17y ago
      They've shown actual products working, most notably at e.g. CES. Wonder why they haven't brought them to market yet? I'm thinking they're still rather expensive to produce.
      - randallsquared 17y ago
        If they don't fail in some obvious way (low battery life; heavy or wearing on the ears and nose; risk of damage to the eye; can't produce true color; or something), I'd happily pay thousands of dollars for one, and I can imagine many, many other people would as well, which would help them drive costs down. At first I thought they were holding out for a large contract from the DoD or something, but after this long I just assume there's something critically wrong with them (one of the above), or that the managers are idiots who can fail to profit from having warehouses of gold. :)
- clistctrl 17y ago
  yeah it seems like it would be reducing the scope of problems by orders of magnitude. The thing about heat makes me stomach hurt, maybe unlikely... but i don't want to take a chance of burning my cornea!!
elcron 17y ago
I switched to contacts from glasses a few months ago, the first few weeks were by far the worst. You get used to it (or at least I did).
- DTrejo 17y ago
  Yeah, eventually you get to the point where you can put in both contacts in about 30 seconds without a mirror. It's cool how different that is from when I first got them, when it took me as much as 10 minutes and a mirror.
  - gjm11 17y ago
    On the other hand, I could put my glasses on in less than 30 seconds without a mirror as soon as I first got them. Of course, they therefore don't give the same sense of accomplishment. (Which is also one of the forces leading people to program in, say, C++, as other people have remarked before.)
    - scott_s 17y ago
      Of course. But with contacts, you don't have anything hanging on your face, and you have better peripheral vision. For me, glasses are better for reading paper and the screen. Contacts are better for everything else. Being able to play various sports without having to choose between worrying about breaking my glasses or being seriously visually impaired is freeing. Even things like running and lifting are so much easier because I don't need to constantly adjust my glasses. And I didn't realize how nice it feels to not have something constantly on my face until I started wearing contacts. There are ups and downs to both glasses and contacts, which is why I wear both during the week and day. But implying that people wear contacts because they feel a sense of accomplishment by putting them in is foolish.
      - joezydeco 17y ago
        Swimming without goggles is difficult when wearing contacts. The lenses tend to wash out of the eye (at least for me).

drp 17y ago

This is straight out of Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End

rrival 17y ago

"We’re starting with a simple product, a contact lens with a single light source, and we aim to work up to more sophisticated lenses that can superimpose computer-generated high-resolution color graphics on a user’s real field of vision." Reading this in a non-fiction context is so exciting.

onreact-com 17y ago
Soon enough people using this or more advanced features will bump into you while seemingly looking at you.

jamesk2 17y ago

How about skipping the contact lens altogether and using Lasik to etch a conductive surface like circuits onto the cornea itself. It's bio circuitry via laser lithography. Always on augmented reality.

ben_straub 17y ago
But unfortunately irreversible, and non-upgradeable. When things improve on a Moore's-law curve, you don't want to make a permanent commitment.
- jamesk2 17y ago
  Hey, if Dr. Tattoff can remove tattos with a laser somebody will make rewritable lasers like DVD-RW! Maybe not infinite rewrites but it's possible. Anyone see Blade Runner? There was a chinese guy who is the eyeball making specialist. Recently I saw a story that scientists are growing livers for transplant. I'd like an eyeball upgrade. Maybe one that doesn't fatigue as easily as my default parts.
  - jerf 17y ago
    As much fun as it is to speculate about the ultimate invincibility of science, I would like to point out that the key to writable and re-writable CDs and DVDs is the dye, not the laser. That after all the selection pressure the eye has gone through, it also happened to be made of a re-writable dye of any sort seems rather improbable.
jodrellblank 17y ago
You'll regret it when it's hacked to display adverts.
- jamesk2 17y ago
  Yeah but a free adwords model would be wickedly popular. Maybe Google Augment or gAugment

tsestrich 17y ago

In reality, I have a hard time imagining that anyone would be able to distinguish anything meaningful from a display on a contact lens. That's like suggesting that you could read a printed word on a contact lens today. You wouldn't be able to focus on something that is directly on your eyeball. I think in addition to the technical challenge of actually getting something like this working in a contact lens, the issue of physically being able to make use of such a device needs to be addressed. To those suggesting a pair of glasses be used instead, I think this is a more practical suggestion for both reasons (the biological and technical). If I try really hard I'm barely able to focus on something as close as my glasses.

mcantor 17y ago
FTA: "By now you’re probably wondering how a person wearing one of our contact lenses would be able to focus on an image generated on the surface of the eye. After all, a normal and healthy eye cannot focus on objects that are fewer than 10 centimeters from the corneal surface. The LEDs by themselves merely produce a fuzzy splotch of color in the wearer’s field of vision. Somehow the image must be pushed away from the cornea. One way to do that is to employ an array of even smaller lenses placed on the surface of the contact lens. Arrays of such microlenses..."
- tjmc 17y ago
  I get the sense they underestimate how hard it will be to get the optics right for that in a contact lens. It might be worthwhile to forget all the electronics to begin with and just focus (no pun intended) on making a static figure viewable via microlenses and then build from there. Another issue is that contact lenses need to breath. They admit in the article that gas permeability is affected as features are added to the lens, so I'd think glasses would be a safer option.

tlrobinson 17y ago

Most expensive contact lens ever.

albemuth 17y ago

I've recently started running with a heart rate monitor, angry that it doesn't display bpm and a redline alert allá FPS

rms 17y ago

Welcome to the future, my friends.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

Don't forget with dual contacts we also have 3-D capabilities. 3-D, high-resolution, virtual-reality-mapped information, games, communications. This is going to be a very cool technology to check back with in five or ten years.

wlievens 17y ago

I so terribly want this. Even in ordinary glasses it would be awesome. Where can I get one? :-)