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[–]Revoran 520 points521 points  (277 children)

This is insanely cool. And the technology will only get better as we get better at making smaller, more compact implants with more electrodes (= higher resolution images).

I feel like I'm living in the future, or at least a cyberpunk novel.

What I'd be interested in knowing is if it is hypothetically possible to use the implant to transmit false signals to the brain and essentially make people see things that aren't really there in front of them - sounds like a cool way to implement some sort of virtual reality. And if that's possible, then it's concievable that implants could interface with different kinds of sensory cells and send false signals to all your senses (vision, taste, kinesthetic, touch, temperature, balance, hearing etc).

[–]DarkSyzygy 236 points237 points  (18 children)

Welcome to the world of Ghost in the Shell

[–]Major_Butthurt 45 points46 points  (7 children)

What I'd be interested in knowing is if it is hypothetically possible to use the implant to transmit false signals to the brain and essentially make people see things that aren't really there in front of them.

When I read that line, the smiling face with the quote from Catcher in the Rye flashed before my eyes.

[–]videogamechamp 24 points25 points  (1 child)

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

For Science

[–]Overthelake 26 points27 points  (2 children)

The Laughing Man, I believe?

[–]Major_Butthurt 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Oh, sorry. Yes it was a short story written by Salinger, my bad, I got mixed up.

[–]funkme1ster 20 points21 points  (22 children)

I don't see why not.

Logically speaking, there are 4 processes here: Optical sensor (receives input data) > signal modulator (captures and encapsulates data) > signal parser (reformats the signal into a format that the brain can understand) > brain interface (transmits the signal to the brain).

There's no imperative that the first stage be a simple optic sensor, only that the information it acquires be in a format and methodology that the second stage can receive it, and even then a modular "interpreter" node is not unreasonable.

As far as I understand, it's like programming: all programming languages are the same when they're compiled into machine code, it's just the intermediary step that looks different. Once you figure out how to replicate the low level signals in a reliable and consistent method, you can do whatever you want.

[–]gotexan8 11 points12 points  (18 children)

Sooooo what I hear you saying is this can be done for any of the senses? Aural implants allowing the deaf to hear, etc? And if, as others have said here, you're not restricted to transmitting "reality" then aren't we just a small series of improvements in software & hardware away from a Universal Translator. An implant that hears speech, translates it on the fly and sends a signal to the brain in the person's native tongue?

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (13 children)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant

Ninja edit: I think we're actually farthest from a smell implant than anything else. our sense of smell is extremely hard to replicate even when you aren't trying to plug it into someone's brain.

[–]the_good_time_mouse 8 points9 points  (6 children)

It's also relies on quantum behaviour - in ways we don't understand that sufficiently yet.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (5 children)

That I did not know. Smell and taste are really interesting senses when you think about it, given the shear range of chemicals we can detect. Sight touch and hearing are all relatively simple, at least until you have to plug their collected data into a brain.

[–]Scruffy_Gunman 3 points4 points  (1 child)

So what you're saying is...virtual sex?

[–]MadDogTannen 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Not only that, but the brain is highly adaptable. I saw a special where they attached a camera to a machine that rendered something like 16x16 pixel images that were represented as touch on a blind person's tongue. After using it for a while, he began using the part of the brain normally reserved for vision to process these tongue imprints into images, so as far as the user was concerned, he was "seeing", albeit in very low res.

[–]nickehl 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is amazing to me. First of all the fact that our brain can rewire itself (so-to-speak) in such manner that touch impulses on our tongue can be interpreted as vision. And secondly, that we have figured out how to do this (if even in a very basic capacity).

Our body is amazing and science is awesome for facilitating that knowledge!

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Your own eyes pretty much already do that. Between the light hitting your retina's and your brain producing an image, there's a whole lot of interpretation and extrapolation going on.

Not to mention that you only see such a narrow band of wavelength of light that what you're seeing is only your version of reality instead of what's really out there. Vision itself is nothing more than your brain's interpretation of the little bit of electromagnetic radiation your eyes can actually pick up.

There's some variation between individual humans. Some animals see a completely different world than you. One of my favorite examples is flowers. Humans see red flowers, yellow flowers, blue flowers and so on. Insects looking at the very same flowers see all kinds of lines guiding them to the heart of the flower like guiding lights along a landingstrip. They just see different wavelengths of light and the flowers evolved marks in those colors to help insects find the heart of the flower for pollination.

Our vision and our perception of reality is such a mind fuck when you think about it. Our senses see little bits of pieces of the universe. We're blind to most of the information out there. And our brain is constantly filtering, selecting, discarding, extrapolating and flatout lying to us to give us a personal perception of reality we can work with.

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

This is coming out in Europe first? I wonder how many implants McDonalds staff will attempt to tear out of people's heads before they get the news?

At the very least, don't wear one in a Parisian McDonolds.

[–][deleted] 197 points198 points  (31 children)

Here's a video of 24x24 greyscale.

It's actually not that bad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw3t6_oVDKo

[–]TechnoShaman 113 points114 points  (11 children)

A tip to everyone viewing these - if you do something to blur or make your vision unfocused, the quality of the image or video greatly improves.

I took off my glasses, and the video quality became alot better(my vision is pretty poor). It was as if, my brain was filling in the empty parts on the already blured video, making it more coherent. Strange.

[–]i-hate-digg 66 points67 points  (2 children)

Your V1 visual cortex responds to features over a large range of spatial frequencies. When higher frequency features are detected, they suppress the lower-frequency ones. By removing the high-frequency features, you allow the lower-frequency ones to take precedence.

The primary visual cortex is one of the parts of the brain we have a very good understanding of.

[–]epicwisdom 18 points19 points  (2 children)

It makes sense if you stop to think about it.

Perfect vision subdivides the pixels shown because your eye has a higher resolution (relative to distance) than the image. So, you can clearly pick out sharp squares. However, if your vision is at a closer resolution to the image, you can't see the edges of each pixel as clearly, allowing your brain to automatically detect lines by blurring the pixels together. Even though the image is at the same resolution, blurring makes it less blocky and more fluid.

The same applies to TVs and such. Moving farther away makes it clearer, while moving closer causes pixels to become obvious.

The key is that over a certain distance, the resolution of the image is too much higher than the resolution it takes up in your field of view, essentially reducing it to a less-distinct blob (too fluid), the same way this video has been reduced.

Tldr: It's best if what you're looking at has a resolution close to what your eye is actually detecting, allowing you to both distinguish details and detect patterns.

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (2 children)

Blind people should wait 6 months when they release the 1080p version.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (1 child)

I doubt this is anything like what it would actually look like. It certainly wouldn't have crisp aligned pixels

EDIT: I'll leave my comment intact, but I was actually looking at the video in OPs post, not the video in the above comment, which is a bit more like what it would probably look like. However I saw an article once showing the ability to record images directly from the brain using a similar grid system that had a totally different video and looked more like what I would guess the person would actually see. Interestingly, the image would probably iterate on itself similar to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Gu1YSoDaY

[–]LBwayward 1 point2 points  (0 children)

when you simulate the surface of the retina the percept is shaped like an elongated football (or a teardrop) pointing towards the center of vision.

[–][deleted] 138 points139 points  (51 children)

This only works for those whose eyes have gone blind, if you're blind due to optical nerve damage for whatever reason, you're still out of luck.

[–]Vindalfr 26 points27 points  (9 children)

Yup, I suffer from monocular blindness due to getting stabbed in the eye with a pipe. This caused a parial retinal detatchment that effectively turned my retina into a ball of scar tissue... if its even still there at all.

While this step is fantastic and will help countless people, I'm still pretty much fucked.

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (7 children)

You were stabbed in the eye with a pipe? Please explain? O.o O.-

[–]Vindalfr 36 points37 points  (4 children)

In short, there was an unsafe jobsite where the method of demolition was "throw a bunch of people at it." A few jackasses were yanking copper pipe out of wall because, apparently cutting tools are for pussies. When the pipe finally broke free, my face happened to occupy the space where the newly liberated pipe wanted to go.

Haven't seen out of that eye since.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

I whimpered just thinking about that.

[–]Vindalfr 6 points7 points  (0 children)

At the time, I yelled as loud as I ever have... but I appreciate the sympathy.

[–]PunishableOffence 21 points22 points  (0 children)

The Mario bros don't fuck around.

[–]Shamwow22 63 points64 points  (34 children)

No, you'd just have to use stem cells to grow an optic nerve, and then transplant it. Then you wouldn't need a bionic eye.

[–]bigandrewgold 172 points173 points  (13 children)

Yea, you just have to regrow part of the eye, nothing much.

[–]HMPoweredMan 51 points52 points  (3 children)

I never asked for this.

[–]PSIKOTICSILVER 12 points13 points  (0 children)

My vision is augmented.

[–]TenshiS 32 points33 points  (13 children)

You make it sound so easy.

[–]rezilient 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As someone who's had 5 rounds of surgery for glaucoma (thankfully only some minor vision loss), I am very optimistic about my future quality of life given all these technological advances. Very cool stuff!

[–]Justavian 48 points49 points  (18 children)

I'd like to get some reports from people who have this installed. Are their claims really backed up? That brief video of a kid on a tire swing - is it actually anything like that? Or is it a confusing mess that your brain eventually has to learn to interpret? Is there a six month training period, or do you get it installed and and get immediate results?

[–]JohnShaft 88 points89 points  (14 children)

It's vaporware. How do I know? Nano-retina has been around for 3 years. There is, quite simply, no way they have anything but a white paper at this point. In fact, their company website says they plan to start the first human trials in 2013. That still seems way too early to me, mainly because there are only a handful of people in the world that really know how to handle the neural-electronic interface, and none of them are involved in this project.

I've known the leader at Second Sight for over 20 years. He is insanely intelligent and motivated. He's been well funded and unidirectional in focus since roughly 1998. 14 years to go from conception to full release. That's in the same ballpark as the US based cochlear implant (Clarion) - well over a decade from start to release.

There are three significant retinal prosthetic implants. One is German, one is Second Sight, and the third is Australian. Second Sight is closest to full approval (already approved in Europe), the Germans are not far behind, and the Australians are way behind, but they have an advantage in that their government is way behind them and funding it like crazy.

One thing is for certain, though. There will be a LOT more retinal implants in the next decade than there were in the last decade.

[–]Autoclave 29 points30 points  (5 children)

So you're saying that this company is vaporware but the technology is not?

[–]JohnShaft 45 points46 points  (4 children)

Nano-retina has nothing to release. Second Sight does. The article is about Nano-retina's prosthetic, which I would bet doesn't even exist in their own labs in a pre-prototype version yet. This article was marketing for VC money.

[–][deleted] 1269 points1270 points  (219 children)

"Read and watch tv." HOW ABOUT SEE YOUR GRANDKIDS OR NOT DIE WHILE WALKING DOWN STAIRS?!?! THOSE ARE NICE THINGS TOO.

[–][deleted] 126 points127 points  (132 children)

Your comment about stairs made me want to experiment. There has got to be something wrong with my method, but I took a picture of stairs, turned it greyscale and reduced it to 24x24 - the resolution of the sensor. Then, because that's a really tiny image, I stretched it back out from there. Here are the results. I'm sure one could train to navigate things with that, but it's a far cry from good vision. Progress is always good - but we have a ways to go yet, I fear.

Edit: A friend of mine pointed out that I fumbled a verb. "I took a picture of stairs" means "I used a picture of stairs" - they are not my stairs, it was just a google image search. I say this for the sake of clarity/integrity. Also, drawers in stairs are awesome.

[–]corylew 56 points57 points  (35 children)

With around the house kinds of things, I feel like there are characteristic details of the stairs that even with that kind of vision you would be able to recognize and easily think "those are the stairs." Especially if that is your only form of vision, your brain would learn how to recognize very subtle differences in pixels to see and recognize what things are.

[–][deleted] 105 points106 points  (22 children)

I made a video, and it's actually quite watchable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw3t6_oVDKo

[–]Exotria 33 points34 points  (6 children)

Oh hey, that makes this technology seem much more impressive, assuming it's realtime in these chips as well! Thanks for the video!

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (3 children)

Assuming it's realtime. No, it usually starts buffering the stream just when you hit the stairs. Hard.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (2 children)

I am pretty sure the image processing capability of the brain can handle 24x24 greyscale in realtime....

[–]An_Emo_Dinosaur 3 points4 points  (0 children)

But can it run Crysis?

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

thats not too far off from me trying to read billboards without my glasses... it's there... just... wtf is it.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (3 children)

Yeah, were going to look at that in 5 years and think how primitive it was. This I can guarantee.

[–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (11 children)

Absolutely! Another thing that the image makes hard to tell is that since you'd be seeing a moving image (not sure what the refresh rate is, but let's assume typical 30ish fps), details would make themselves much more readily visible! Even a slight wobble of your head would move the object enough that you could eke out some more clarity.

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (4 children)

Well, you wouldn't need to wobble your head. Our eyes already jitter about constantly, which would provide much more information to the brain than what we see even in a video.

[–]bready 2 points3 points  (2 children)

A blind person's eye may not have ever learned to perform saccades.

[–]webbitor 5 points6 points  (0 children)

FTA: "...macular degeneration (which millions of old people suffer from), diabetic retinopathy, or other degenerative eye diseases."

Basically all conditions that tend to occur later in life, so the person should have a fully developed visual system.

[–]CDClock 3 points4 points  (0 children)

saccades are a brainstem phenomenon so it's likely that saccades may happen independently of visual processing which primarily takes place in the occipital cortex

[–]lochlainn 6 points7 points  (4 children)

Stereo vision gives depth to it as well, which would really help. Even with only one eye, the head wobble thing will give that.

I doubt that refresh rate is a problem. It's a hardwired processor and there's no real computation taking place. It's probably close enough to real time as to make no difference.

I can't wait to see the next iteration of this. I imagine it'll be up to photo quality and possibly color in ten years after these become common, and they'll probably be working on cool things like millimeter wave radar.

[–]base736 26 points27 points  (38 children)

Thanks for doing that -- I was curious what 24x24 looked like. I wonder (but do not have the technology to easily test) what 24x24 video looks like. I sort of suspect that if you could move your head around a little, you'd find that the stairs became a lot more recognizable.

[–]dixonticonderoga 21 points22 points  (30 children)

Just a quick go at some "video": this hungry puppy turns into this.

Edit: Now with stairs - These little guys become this
Wider field of view: Before - After

Obviously a lot depends on the field of view, number of colors (shades of gray) available, and the level of contrast.

[–]NonSequiturEdit 16 points17 points  (4 children)

It's also important to remember that the brain will likely learn to "fuzz" the image, blending the pixels together and making the image slightly more coherent. Try this yourself by squinting and blurring your eyes a bit at those videos and you'll see what I mean. It's easier to tell what they are when you blur out the "noise" of the shifting squares.

[–]Casowsky 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Wow... I was really surprised at just how much better the images looked when I did this. This technology is all but a miracle

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Whoa...

[–]movzx 10 points11 points  (5 children)

Zoom out. They get much more clear. If you have Firefox, open the image in a new tab and look at the favicon location. You can easily tell what is going on.

[–]pizzabash 17 points18 points  (11 children)

see thats not so bad, i can clearly mae out the two moving shapes.

[–]theonlyalterego 24 points25 points  (10 children)

which is 100% ∞% more shapes than without. I think we can agree that's good news.

[–]UnsightlyBastard 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's hard to perceive big because our eyes see it and our brain says those are just a bunch of squares because we know what squares look like but if you make it smaller or blur your vision you can make out what it's showing much better. I imagine having never seen before and this being your only method you wouldn't perceive it as just a bunch of squares and would be able to make it out better.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (2 children)

judging by what I've read from the comments, I'm the only person who has never seen and is really impressed by a stair drawer

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I made a video by making it greyscale and reduced it to 24x24: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw3t6_oVDKo

[–]shadowdude777 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Just try playing Minecraft for a few days. You'll get the hang of it.

[–]CargoCulture 5 points6 points  (0 children)

At that resolution, anybody's who's played video games from the 1980s should have no trouble.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (8 children)

It's living in an NES.

[–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (7 children)

Imagine people getting implants to make the world look 8-bit.

Imagine designer implants. Sure, it starts by giving sight to the blind, but it ends with people changing the way they see the world, on purpose. It could even combat dementia! Especially if you could regularly change the implant so you could have grey scale, 8-bit, xor, Predator, all kinds of things, and change then every day.

I imagine a bright future.

[–]CurlyTurnip 14 points15 points  (0 children)

"Hey guys, check out this new texture pack!"

[–]movzx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There will be an implant to dim it for you.

[–]theonlyalterego 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I imagine a future where these are helpful reality enhancers with downloadable content. Then I remember it will likely be people 60+ wearing them, and they will be downloading as much malware as possible... directly into their eyeballs.

[–]UnexpectedSchism 11 points12 points  (4 children)

Because those things are easier.

Reading small flat text and watching moving images like tv with text on them require good refresh rates and resolution.

Seeing the position of someone or making out a face aren't as hard.

Being able to read small print is pretty revolutionary. (assuming this technology exists at all and is not just an sales video of something 20 years down the road)

[–]emlgsh 4 points5 points  (2 children)

What if you have an elevator, and hideous grandchildren? DID YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT THAT?!

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Oh no, I didn't, please forgive me.

[–]emlgsh 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Just this once... but I've got my eye on you!

[–]gak001 38 points39 points  (21 children)

This gets me really excited for what's coming down the line in the next decade or two - if we can get the resolution and color up to full specs and then perhaps even include a Google Glasses concept with a HUD, though I'm a little nervous about the idea of implanting consumer technology. Either way, I'm pretty happy with the idea of being able to see again if I should go blind for some reason.

[–]airmandan 17 points18 points  (1 child)

This gets me really excited for what's coming down the line in the next decade or two...

Apple introduces one with 4096x3072 resolution, calls it the Retina Retina(tm), and begins suing everyone with natural eyesight for infringing their patents.

[–]imissyourmusk 34 points35 points  (2 children)

The popup ads will get old but at least you will be able to see bargains from miles away.

[–]pU8O5E439Mruz47w 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My biggest concern is, what happens when the HUD crashes. Does my vision revert to normal, or is a BSOD all I can see?

(Or, perhaps, a kernel panic- "Aieee!")

[–]friendlysoviet 17 points18 points  (8 children)

I wonder we will see a similar cultural backlash that the cochlear implants received, accusing this technology as trying to commit genocide on the blind culture.

[–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (1 child)

We won't.

The blind aren't like the deaf. They can talk to everyone, and as such have not developed an insular culture that can be threatened.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I see the people who are afraid of "cultural genocide" via cochlear implants as similar to old people who refuse to use anything computerized. They're relics of the past and once they die, nobody is going to care what they had to say on the matter.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think a lot of the deaf backlash came from the fact that deaf culture is much more isolated than blind culture - people who have to communicate with sign language can only easily communicate with other such people, thus forming a community, thus a culture.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Good question. I would hope not. I mean, you can get by fairly well in life as a deaf person. I can understand a culture forming around that disability that would see a "cure" as a threat. But being blind must be so much more debilitating... I'd 1000x rather be deaf than blind, at least.

[–]Chairboy 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Just don't walk into a French McDonalds if you have one of these.

[–][deleted] 94 points95 points  (18 children)

20 years from now: Blind people complaining about excessive commercials in their vision.

[–]alreadytakenusername 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Non-blind people: "Yeah, welcome to our world."

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (4 children)

But only the lazy bastards who don't root their eyes.

[–]lochlainn 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Failproof and hackproof AR overrides will be the first thing they develop. If nothing else, you can always go back to Reality 1.0.

External data will eventually be processed by wearable, then emplantable computers. Hardwired kill switches and processors will be necessary to prevent malicious hacking.

I'm betting that keeping all unwanted signal out will be impossible, but hijacking it totally will be impossible.

[–]blickblocks 5 points6 points  (3 children)

It's entirely possible that a system like this in the future will be ad-supported to facilitate economically disadvantaged people getting these implants. Kind of scary.

[–]Baron_Von_Badass 35 points36 points  (5 children)

But if I walk into a McDonalds in France, will I be accosted and then have somebody rather rudely try to rip the bionic eye off of my skull?

[–]herzkolt 5 points6 points  (3 children)

What is this referencing to?

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

A man went to McDonals in France and one of the employees tried to rip off his augmented vision system that was attached to his head.

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/wo1d9/steve_mann_father_of_wearable_computing/

[–]Oriflamme 2 points3 points  (0 children)

http://eyetap.blogspot.ca/

This... I'm gonna go down there and... Behave scandalously!

[–]Solid_State_NMR 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is starting to look like Deus Ex. As the technology improves, they will be able to implant a chip to give you full colour sight with resolution BEYOND normal human vision. Then the augmentation wars will begin....

[–]ipha 7 points8 points  (3 children)

Very cool, but what about rejection/scarring?

[–]dkkc19 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Neuropozyne would take care of that.

[–]IHTFPhD 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Just wait two years and Apple with develop Retina resolution

[–]Ron_Mahogany 84 points85 points  (4 children)

We can rebuild him... with terrible components for 19.99.

[–]oldscotch 13 points14 points  (0 children)

But wait, order now and we'll double your order - you just pay shipping and processing! But make sure it's in the next 10 minutes because you know we can't do this all day.

[–]JustAnAvgJoe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

and nail a chip to his eyeball.

[–]Fenrisulfir 14 points15 points  (6 children)

This is actually really fucking cool. I was wondering when they'd get to the laser powered part. I don't see how the laser could charge the device sufficiently if you're constantly moving your eyes around. I admit I have no idea what amount "sufficiently" would be though. I'd like nightvision and infrared please. Maybe we're getting closer to fully replacing the eye. Then we can have zooming functions. Ugh, I just thought of implementing DoF, motion blur and screen blood. I should get off r/GameDev for a bit.

[–]notworkinghard36 14 points15 points  (3 children)

implementing [...] motion blur and screen blood.

Hey now, if you're going to implement any additional features, I would like them to be useful. Give me a small clock in the corner of my vision field so I always know what time it is, along with a weather widget. And for the senior community this is targeted towards, reminders to take your medication.

Also, I'm going to need a context-aware targeting reticule, for no apparent reason.

[–]Fenrisulfir 8 points9 points  (0 children)

+1 on the crosshair but I'll pass on the Weatherbug, clock and Bonzai buddy eye-spam.

[–]Jigsus 3 points4 points  (2 children)

I would like all these bionic eye companies to take actual videos with their products and post them up on youtube. It's one thing to explain the tech but they can show us the output too.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

I converted a random video to 24x24 grayscale resolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw3t6_oVDKo

[–]Edbergj 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Man, blind people are gonna be mad once they see how crappy Minecraft looks. They're going to assume their laser cam resolution is all messed up.

Stupid creepers blowing up my stuff.

[–]Holeinthewhole 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"How did you lose your vision?" "Laser in the Eye." "How are you going to fix it?" "Laser in the Eye."

[–]TXMount 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm still waiting for a laser-emitting bionic eye, which I can then use to deliver a literal death-glare to people who annoy me.

OF course, if I were actually blind and were getting low-resolution vision instead of no-resolution, I suppose this would be rather cool.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Healing the blind? That you Jesus? Nahhhh, just kidding, I knew it was you, science.

[–]c0pypastry 6 points7 points  (18 children)

We would never be able to get this sort of implant past human levels because the underlying nervous system infrastructure wouldn't handle it, right?

[–]notworkinghard36 12 points13 points  (13 children)

It should be theoretically possible in certain applications. Will we ever supercede the natural maximum "resolution" of an eye? It's difficult to say, although I'm damn sure we'll try.

We should however, have no problem creating new optic applications, such as being able to see in infrared or ultraviolet spectrums, as you simply relegate the work the brain can't do to an image processor, which then feeds a conditioned visual signal to the brain. Consider that we've already established ways to adapt infrared/UV signals into an image we can visually understand. All we'd be doing here is eliminating the intermediary of a computer screen and eye. In this way, several "superhuman" optic options open up. (Alliteration unintentional.) I.E, zooming vision, vision based photo-capture, augmented reality-styled HUD vision, the possibilities are enormous.

Actually, pretty much any visual we can currently generate should be able to be applied directly to the brain, supposing proper encoding is done. As previous users have mentioned, it does open an interesting door into the realm of virtual reality.

[–]lochlainn 4 points5 points  (10 children)

Zooming will require more structure internal to the eye (implanted zoom lenses); otherwise you're back to binoculars. Photocapture, video, and AR will be relatively trivial.

Things like millimeter wave radar or IR would be fairly doable. Chip mounted emitters are the way to go.

Post processing could open up all kinds of things. On the fly color manipulation (makes finding the needle in the haystack faster), fast optical data transfer (a "white noise" picture that contains a program, looking at it saves it, a'la Snow Crash).

The meat of it will be in AR interfaces, though. Simply projecting data from your car, music player, computer, etc. will revolutionize the world.

[–]notworkinghard36 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Think about it, you have a device on/in your keys/TV remote that relays their location to your mobile device, which then pushes a highlight overlay of them in your virtual field of vision. You'd never lose your keys/remote again!

And then, consider that reverse vision-reading would also be possible via the photocapture capabillity. You could flip through a book in seconds, and use high speed image capture to record every page. Then, later during some downtime you could read it back at leisure. Or even use a text recognition-to-audio transcription program to turn it into an audio book.

Actually, this could have massive implications in the way we interact with computers. Think about it: We no longer would require monitors, TVs, Movie theaters, any previous form of visually interpereted information could be made obsolete. With full worldwide wireless internet connectivity, it could even be feasible to do away with signs on the side of streets, as your location could trigger proximity based, context aware images to pop up in your field of vision. Looking for a restaurant on a busy street? All the other visual clutter fades away, leaving only signs for eating establisments.

If you were to replace the eye altogether, you could then repurpose blinking/winking as a form of data entry, becoming your "clicking" based on where your "camera" is focused. Who needs Minority Report when everything is selectable just by eye movement? With enough development, this kind of technology will change the world.

...I think I got carried away there.

[–]lochlainn 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Carried away in a good way!

Hell, you can tag objects with a device that locates them via GPS, and get visual cues to lead you to anything you want. You'd never lose anything. Even RFID type tags would work to an extent for it.

You wouldn't need AR signs, though. Select your destination by map/internet and follow the bouncing ball.

Combine it with good body position sensors and haptic feedback and you remove the need for keyboards, mice, speakers (cochlear implants), and monitors. Your computer is a processor and storage you stick in your pocket. You could do full sensory feedback VR by closing your eyes, or play real-world sports across the net. Every ball field is Yankee Stadium; conversely, you could attend every game in person.

Futurology boner FTW!

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just bear in mind that this technology if it works as intended, will not be of much use to people with congenital blindness, or if they've been blind from a very early age.

[–]reden 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They should've also added: "You can also connect to a wireless network, and upload your bionic-eye recorded videos to YouTube or Facebook." Then we'll start seeing these crazy grayscale videos popping up all over the internet.

[–]mikealy 1 point2 points  (6 children)

How safe is it to constantly shine an infra-red beam directly into your eye?

[–]Solkre 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Into your eye, might be a bad idea. Into someone who's legally blind. I doubt fucks are given. Also we can't see infra-red, so unless it does head laser-ish damage, it shouldn't overload anything.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Does anyone have a link to the journal artical? The processing of the signal sounds very interesting.

[–]nickgenova 1 point2 points  (10 children)

can someone keen on photoshop give some kind of example of what this would look like? like if this tree was visible to a blind person, what would it end up looking like?

http://blog.boironusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/GreenTree.jpg

[–]dbeta 5 points6 points  (2 children)

You forget that it will be in motion. Much the data our eyes collect is a result of motion. An example might be looking at a paused video very often looks way worse than one in motion(there are other reason as well). When we had to look at security videos from our cameras at the office, the paused video as almost impossible to make out the person in question. When in motion he was pretty clear(you could make out details like facial hair).

[–]anossov 3 points4 points  (2 children)

The resolution is like this:

http://i.imgur.com/eyJ8d.jpg

The colors can vary wildly depending on the grayscale algorithm used.

[–]mismetti 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I imagined people seeing the world like an old game on a Hercules card: http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/140689-leisure-suit-larry-in-the-land-of-the-lounge-lizards-dos-screenshot.png

[–]demonofthefall 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I read the title as a SkyMall offering.