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| Telescopic Contact Lens |
Have you ever desired to have vision that could zoom in and out, like the Terminator? Well now maybe soon you can.
A team is working on a telescopic contact lens that is just over a millimeter thick. The lens is surrounded by a ring of movable components that magnify view by 2.8 times. As of yet, it is not able to compute the facial structure of what is being looked at but liquid crystal shutters allow the wearer to switch between normal and magnified vision.
The contact lens was developed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland and at the University of California, San Diego by Eric Tremblay and his colleagues. The research and development for the project has been funded by DARPA.
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So far the team has integrated the LCD shutter mechanism into a pair of modified Samsung 3D TV glasses. The lens has been tested on a mechanical model of the human eye and it is hoped that it won’t be too long before the LCD technology can be embedded directly into the lens itself, doing away with the 3D glasses.
According to New Scientist, the researches have said “Although the magnified images were clearly visible in our tests, acuity fell short of the design specification.” The team believe that if they can improve the refractive optics, then any diffraction related problems will be solved.
