This looks like a nice way to provide covert information to a user, a display built into a contact lens. Read here. The LEDs in the contact lens will project information into the lens itself and the image displayed will appear to float up to a metre away from the user.
Think how handy this would be during exam time, err…, I mean when you are working on a train or in a car. Like all the other displays that in reality provide head up displays it could be used for Sat Nav, instruction aids while working on units, PDAs reminding the forgetful among us information on whom we are speaking to. In reality although using a different, and very interesting, technology it is not all that different in function from the other displays we have looked at.
What I do wonder about is other uses it could be put to. Could it be programmed to change the wearer’s eye colour? How about iris recognition could it spoof that? I’m betting it could be programmed to do so. Coupled with real time information displays this seems more like a tool for spooks. I wonder if this will disappear into Q’s little lab on the Thames and we never see it again.
If not it will make visiting the KGB style airports a lot more interesting.
Do you think it would work in the corner of a normal lens? I could do with one of those.
This would work while you were wearing glasses.
I would envisage that eventually you would have prescription contacts with this built in.
One problem I can foresee – the radio power supply. Airports etc. would just make sure you have given up anything that could be a power source. Also what happens when you are standing next to someone with the same system, do you get to see what they are watching?
Otherwise a very good idea.
A true spy would have a power supply up their bum or something. I’ll stick with it installed in glasses or something similar to provide a small EM field to power the contacts over a foot or so. Unless the airports strip everyone and give them MRIs they will never be able to check them completely. Like the war on booze, the war on drugs and now the war on terror our governments have lost. Let’s ignore the billions spent, the inconvenience and the hatred they have built up in the public.
Like Bluetooth I would envisage each lens would have its own identification when receiving but if acting in colour change mode or retina cloaking it would be passive, and thus undetectable.
Up your bum would be a bit uncomfortable, Lord T although we’ve moved beyond transistors and the like, I suppose. Still, it would be a bit messy, all the same and might impact the enjoyment of the technology.
How about having it connected to facial recognition software so that you never have to fee awkward when seeing a familiar face that can’t remember the name of!!!!
Actually just by pass the middle man and become a borg.
TEV,
There is a massive leap between displaying data on the retina and the system you propose. You would need a camera, a computer with facial recognition and a database of all the faces, (Probably for sale from HMSO in a few years) plus an associated power supply.
Wait a few years though and someone will have one but this is a far cry from that.
Hm, I think facial recognition good enough to distinguish between a few hundred faces sounds pretty trivial compared to other problems of making this display. I believe there are already web services that can search image libraries for matching faces.
The difficult bit about contact lens displays as I see it is being able to update the display such that the “projected” image appears motionless in space. Eyes move about very quickly. To read, you repeatedly focus on different bits of the text. The device must detect the orientation of your eyeball and update its display quickly enough that there is no perceivable lag. Otherwise text in the display will wander around and be impossible to focus on. And probably nauseating.
It’s probably possible, though. And I *want* it. Read the novel Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge to see what a world with these contact lens displays might be like.
Rob,
I’m not saying facial recognition is difficult. I’m saying that installing a camera and the HW and database necessary to do it is going to be difficult to install on a contact lens.
Good point about the display and hadn’t thought about that because of course the lens will move with the eye itself. It would make it difficult for reading but would be OK for simple actions like highlighting areas or making IR visible. I wonder what distance the eye could read a section of text without moving? I have no doubt smart minds will be puzzling over this as we speak. In the meantime I’ll live with a good pair of glasses with a camera built in and some processing power.
I’ve got that book so I’ll have a read of it.
In that case we are agreed. I envisage the contact lens as just a display; other hardware would be worn elsewhere on the body.
Glasses should be a lot easier to do than contact lenses so should arrive sooner. In Accelerando by Charles Stross everyone wears glasses. There’s a great passage in which our hero loses his glasses and discovers that much of his identity, mind and memory is stored in their computer.
Rob,
It looks like it.
It will be like losing a filofax or PDA and losing your entire life not knowing where you should be and how to contact people.