Vernon D. is a member of VSP's Provider Services team.
The Germans have done it again – from the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems comes the first active heads-up-display system mounted within eyeglass frames. This allows the user to view and manipulate data with simple eye movements. Eye movements!
The images are projected onto the retina and appear as if from a meter (ahem – that’s about 3.2 feet) away from the user. You then have the ability to scroll by slowly gazing downward/upward, and can toggle through different menus by simply focusing on different areas of the window pane.
So you’re asking yourself (even though it’s awesome) how is this even useful if I’m not a terminator from the future via SkyNet searching for John Connor? Good question. The researchers suggest that it would be most useful in those situations where the users hands are otherwise occupied – medical technicians for example.
Just don’t get an eyelash stuck in your eye – then you’d be rerouted to Friendster. Friendster I tell you!
[...] on the heels of some weird guy’s post, EyeWriter allows users to manipulate computer drawing programs with only their eye [...]
Come on, I can’t be the only one whose first thought was “Man, I wish these were around when I was in high school. Then I never would have had to write cheat sheets on my arms!”
We’ve seen variants of this in Science Fiction — James Bond’s x-ray glasses in Tomorrow Never Dies, Augur’s stock-market-ticker glasses in Earth: Final Conflict, Martha Jones’s combination camera and text-feed contact lenses in Torchwood Series 2.
In addition to medical information, practical applications could include spectral-enhancement (translating infrared or ultraviolet wavelengths to visible) for improved night vision or engineering fault detection, and navigation-overlay displays.
Another use may be assisting those with serious physical challenges to more effectively communicate their needs. Imagine someone who, after sudden trauma, is unable to otherwise communicate. With a pair of these glasses, they would still be able to interact. This is excellent news.
tmana & momo -
These are great potential uses for this technological achievement! I only glossed over the surface layer and was astonished by the technology aspect, but to think of the countless invaluable uses is just as great. My only hope is that it gets picked up and funded sooner than later. Being used as a medical supplement suggested by momo is an honorable idea.