Personal contact lens displays: The transparent OLED done one better

If you’ve ever dreamed of having vision like Star Trek’s Georgi LaForge, seeing things beyond what’s actually there in the real world, even zooming in on the far off… well then you may need therapy, but apart from that there’s an emerging reality in a related field of science which may soon produce contact lens displays which augment the real-world experience.

Imagine an integrated, autonomous system designed to augment your visual experience with information relevant to your personal surroundings and immediate circumstances. Such a system would allow you to have access to information beyond your personal abilities, by providing reminders or cues that may not have otherwise occurred to you.

For example, the visual cues could be providing real-time GPS navigation which, rather than constantly looking over at your TomTom or Garmin, is naturally there with arrows, even being completely superimposed over what you’re naturally seeing, such as highlighting the exact path the car needs to take. Or, suppose you’re at a dinner party and you approach someone you met at a business meeting last year. You can’t quite remember his name, but in your heads up display — through some form of camera face recognition and access to a database — it pulls up not only his name, but his business line, family, and recent news which may be pertinent. You see all of this in real-time, but he just sees you. And when you say “Hi, Bill! How are Margie and the kids? And did that deal with XYZ Corp ever go through?” He’ll be impressed beyond words.

The truth is he probably won’t be, because when these devices are ready for such an application it’s probable he’ll also have one. And then I suppose it will come down to the geek level of how comprehensive each other’s database is: “Hi, William H. Tucker, III. How are Margaret Eleanor and your two kids, Christian Joseph, 11 and Amy Elizabeth, 8? And did that refinancing deal with XYZ Corp last October ever go through — I believe you were speaking with Danny Thompson?” To which he replies, “You know, Rick C. Hodgin, I’ve been following your articles on Geek.com in recent weeks … what’s up with all these sidelong allegories?” Okay, point taken.

The Eye

At the University of Washington (UW), and several other research centers around the world right now, the technology exists to create limited visual inputs which relate to tiny light sources embedded within the contact lens. While these were not physically enabled in the device linked below (meaning they did not illuminate due to no external power source hookup), they were physically present on the contact lens. Researchers believe any light presented by the lens at this stage would be interpreted by the eyes as being present and subsequently affecting the vision, but it would not be in focus or in any way usable.

In short, the technology necessary to create images or “data portals” as described above are many years away. And in fact, the technology necessary to make this kind of image appear is also quite distant.