Binoculars in the eyes

"Smart" contact lenses have been created,
capable of providing a person with telescopic super-vision

DailyTechInfo based on Gizmag materials: Telescopic contact lenses zoom in and out with the wink of an eyeResearchers from the Swiss Federal Polytechnic University of Lausanne (Swiss Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, EPFL) have developed contact lenses with a built-in telescopic optical device capable of providing a person with a kind of super-vision.

These lenses, controlled by special "smart" glasses, allow you to change the scale of the image, providing both normal vision and magnification up to 2.8 times.

Here and below photo by Eric Tremblay and Joe Ford/ EPFL – VM

Initially, these contact lenses were developed by Swiss researchers commissioned by the Pentagon's Office of Advanced Research Programs DARPA, which planned to use such technologies to increase the vision abilities of soldiers involved in combat operations in difficult conditions. And the new contact lens model, introduced recently, is an improved and upgraded model of 2013.

The thickness of telescopic contact lenses is 1.55 mm. Several reflective and optical elements bonded with biologically neutral compounds are installed on the base of a conventional flexible contact lens. The operation of the optical system of lenses is carried out due to the initial polarization of light and changes in the polarization of the elements of the optical system of glasses. When the polarization of glasses and contact lens elements coincide, the light passes along the same path without undergoing changes. But when the polarization of the glasses changes by a certain angle, the light begins to follow a different path, reflecting off a lot of tiny aluminum mirrors that act as focusing and magnifying lenses.

Switching the elements of the optical system of lenses to the active and inactive state allows step-by-step adjustment of the zoom factor, and this is done by the commands of a person who needs to blink his left or right eye for this. The movement of the left eye serves to increase the scale of the image by one step, and the movement of the right eye restores the scale to the original level. The lens control device used is smart enough to reliably differentiate long-term intentional blinking of the eyes from short unintentional natural blinking.

To supply the surface of the eye with oxygen, the entire volume of contact lenses is permeated with 0.1 mm thick air channels, the presence of which does not affect the optical properties of this device.

It should be noted that in the case of the previous version of telescopic contact lenses, for the magnification effect to work, it was required that a person always looked exactly at the object of interest to him. In the new version, this problem is solved with the help of a system that tracks the movements and position of a person's eyes, which dynamically corrects the angles of polarization of light with glasses and contact lens elements.

The new model of contact lenses has a wider scope of application than the first models. The researchers believe that the application of the technology developed by them will provide invaluable assistance to people suffering from age-related retinal degeneration (AMD) and other diseases of the visual organs.

"We believe that our lenses can become a panacea for people suffering from AMD and other diseases that impair vision," says Eric Tremblay, a researcher at EPFL, "These lenses have a simpler design than other optical vision correction devices, and their use is much easier. All this causes a fairly low cost of technology, which a sufficiently large number of people can afford to use."

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru19.02.2015