Souped-Up Contact Lenses Promise On-Demand Bionic Eyesight

An inventor at the University of Washington holds a flexible contact lens embedded with microcircuits. Researchers will place circuitry outside of the transparent part of the wearer’s eye. The lens will not obstruct a user’s sight when it isn’t activated.

By Erik Sofge

Published in the April 2008 issue.

Most advances in retinal implants concentrate on restoring, not enhancing, sight. But there’s hope yet for superhuman vision, and without surgery: A team at the University of Washington has created a contact lens assembled with functional circuitry and LEDs.

Potential uses include virtual displays for pilots, video-game projections and telescopic vision for soldiers. A working prototype of a lens-embedded antenna that draws power for the device from radio frequencies has also been created. The next steps are to build a version that can display several pixels—and then to test it on a person.

The UW team uses a technique called self-assembly to manufacture the eyewear. Researchers dust a specially designed contact lens with microscale components that automatically bond to predetermined receptor sites. The shape of each component dictates where it attaches.

“There’s a lot of room to expand,” Babak Parviz, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UW, says of the technology. “You can let your imagination run wild.”