These contact lenses have built-in telescopes for 2.8x magnification.
(2.8x magnification contact lenses)
Researchers at a technology institute in Switzerland, EPFL, have unveiled telescopic contact lenses and smart glasses that would allow users to zoom in and out on command.
The team developed the products in tandem to help people suffering from age-related macular degeneration and other visual impairments.
Researchers say they wanted to create something that was functional but not as bulky as other options for vision loss.
The lens has a very thin reflective telescope inside--giving the wearer the feeling of looking through low magnification binoculars.
Researchers have also developed smart glasses that are paired with the contacts and controlled by winks.
The glasses are designed to ignore blinks and recognize the right or left wink to switch between normal and magnified vision via the lenses.
Fans of Professor Vernor Vinge recall the smart contact lenses from Fast Times at Fairmont High:
Juan squinted at him. "My contact lenses? Smart clothes?" Certainly the lens displays would be useless without a wearable computer to do the graphics.
Even earlier, the writing duo of Niven and Barnes wrote about DreamTime Scleral Contact Lenses from their 1992 novel The California Voodoo Game.
His eyes no longer resembled human eyes...
"Scleral lenses?" she asked. "You've got DreamTime technology in contact lenses? That's not available to the public!"
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/27/2015)
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
A System To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
Smart TVs Are Listening!
'You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard...'