[FoRK] goggles or projectors, redux

[Gordon Mohr]

A small step for contact lens displays:

"Bionic eyes: Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform
for superhuman vision"
http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?visitsource=uwkmail&articleID=39100

=====
> Jan. 17, 2008 
> Bionic eyes: Contact lenses with circuits, lights a
> possible platform for superhuman vision 
> By Hannah Hickey 
> News and Information
> 
> Movie characters from the Terminator to the Bionic Woman use bionic
> eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their
> field of view, or create virtual crosshairs. Off the screen, virtual
> displays have been proposed for more practical purposes -- visual
> aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control
> panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.
> 
> The device to make this happen may be familiar. Engineers at the UW
> have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic
> scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an
> imprinted electronic circuit and lights.
> 
> "Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is
> generating superimposed on the world outside," said Babak Parviz, a
> UW assistant professor of electrical engineering. "This is a very
> small step toward that goal, but I think it's extremely promising."
> The results were presented today at the Institute of Electrical and
> Electronics Engineers' international conference on Micro Electro
> Mechanical Systems by Harvey Ho, a former graduate student of
> Parviz's now working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore,
> Calif. Other co-authors are Ehsan Saeedi and Samuel Kim in the UW's
> electrical engineering department and Tueng Shen in the UW Medical
> Center's ophthalmology department.
> 
> 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.
> 
> The prototype device contains an electric circuit as well as red
> light-emitting diodes for a display, though it does not yet light up.
> The lenses were tested on rabbits for up to 20 minutes and the
> animals showed no adverse effects.
> 
> Ideally, installing or removing the bionic eye would be as easy as
> popping a contact lens in or out, and once installed the wearer would
> barely know the gadget was there, Parviz said.
> 
> Building the lenses was a challenge because materials that are safe
> for use in the body, such as the flexible organic materials used in
> contact lenses, are delicate. Manufacturing electrical circuits,
> however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and
> toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal
> only a few nanometers thick, about one thousandth the width of a
> human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a
> millimeter across. They then sprinkled the grayish powder of
> electrical components onto a sheet of flexible plastic. The shape of
> each tiny component dictates which piece it can attach to, a
> microfabrication technique known as self-assembly. Capillary forces
> -- the same type of forces that make water move up a plant's roots,
> and that cause the edge of a glass of water to curve upward -- pull
> the pieces into position.
> 
> The prototype contact lens does not correct the wearer's vision, but
> the technique could be used on a corrective lens, Parviz said. And
> all the gadgetry won't obstruct a person's view.
> 
> "There is a large area outside of the transparent part of the eye
> that we can use for placing instrumentation," Parviz said. Future
> improvements will add wireless communication to and from the lens.
> The researchers hope to power the whole system using a combination of
> radio-frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens, Parviz
> said.
> 
> A full-fledged display won't be available for a while, but a version
> that has a basic display with just a few pixels could be operational
> "fairly quickly," according to Parviz.
> 
> The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and a
> Technology Gap Innovation Fund from the UW.