In the movies, superheroes and bionic men and women have super human optical range. They see through walls, zoom in on far away targets and have useful information pop up in their line of sight like a computer screen. We wonder how this can one day be part of our everyday lives, or even something like this will be possible in our lifetime.

Researchers made up of engineers from the University of Washington have used manufacturing techniques with the help of optical lab instrument at microscopic scales to combine a flexible and biologically safe type of contact lens with an electronic circuit and lights. Hard to believe that one day soon you’ll have eyes like the Terminator and the Bionic Woman?

Babak Parviz, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington explains that when looking through their invention, you would see a display that is being superimposed on the world outside as you see it. The lens is still in its infancy, but the findings are promising and can branch off to other researches and studies. The results, which were presented at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ international conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems by Harvey Ho, who was a former graduate student of Parviz’s and is now working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore , Calif. The project would not have been possible without co-authors Ehsan Saeedi and Samuel Kim from the engineering department, as well as Tueng Shen from the university medical center’s ophthalmology department.

Virtual displays in the form of bionic contact lenses may have various applications aside from being used by heroes. Drivers and pilots may find it useful as a vehicle’s speed can be projected onto the windshield. Video game players will be in virtual bliss when video game companies create contact lenses to project the games without necessarily hampering or restricting the player’s movements. For internet users, who wouldn’t want to surf the net on screens that only they can see? The applications, as you can only imagine, are endless. Optical lab instrument may be able to diagnose better and faster, with far clearer images than the standard optical lab instrument we have today. The researchers explain that the possibilities are never ending, and their job is to make sure that they are safe.

The existing prototype consists of an electronic circuit with a red light emitting diodes for the display, but it doesn’t light up yet. These prototypes were tested on rabbits, who donned the lenses for about 20 minutes without suffering adverse effects. In humans, the lenses would be as pliable as a regular contact lens and the wearer would even forget that they were wearing them. The researchers state that the manufacture of the contact lens proved to be a great challenge because they not only had to be useful, but they also had to be biologically safe to wear.

Although the prototype does not correct the wearer’s vision, as most contact lenses are made to do, the technique can be used on corrective lens. Researchers state that all the circuits and gadgetry will not impede the wearer’s vision at all. In the future, the researchers hope to install a wireless communication that can receive and send information to and from the lens itself. The highly functional prototype is not available for quite some time yet, but a basic lens with a display of just a few mega-pixels can be operational all too soon. Continue research on this page