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New technology could deliver text messages via contact lens

By | December 9, 2012, 5:45 PM PST

Liquid crystal displays are no longer just for TVs, computers and other gadgets.

Researchers at Ghent University in Belgium have developed a new technology that allows LCD displays to show text on the spherical, small circle of a contact lens. And it can project images using wireless technology.

This means that you could someday receive text messages via contact lens — just the way they do in sci-fi films.

“Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working towards real applications, possibly available in only a few years,” Professor Herbert De Smet told The Telegraph.

Other possible applications are to create contact lenses that are made of one pixel that fully covers the lens so the lenses can act as adaptable sunglasses. Or, the lenses could be used to give directions, or to help protect damaged irises by controlling the amount of light that enters the retina.

The contact lenses could even be used for cosmetic purposes: to change the color of the iris.

Watch the video below to see the contact lens and its display in action.

Related on SmartPlanet:

via: The Telegraph

photo: screenshot

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Laura Shin

About Laura Shin

Laura Shin is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Laura Shin

Laura Shin

Contributing Editor

Laura Shin has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, and is currently a contributor at Forbes. Previously, she worked at Newsweek, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and LearnVest. She holds degrees from Stanford University and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Follow her on Twitter.

Laura Shin

Laura Shin

In the unlikely event that Laura has a professional or financial relationship with a company she writes about, it will be prominently disclosed.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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Initially, it will have more applications in horror and zombie
movies, where the lens gets to change the image and color appearing in it, depending on the need of the scene being shot.

It might, however, become a replacement for the tablets of the future, which are mostly, media consumption devices, and all that would be needed is a low cost and low power CPU to send the images to the receiving lens or "eye-resident monitor".
Posted by adornoe
10th Dec
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Can you focus on the surface of your eye?
Would you see the world normally and have the text overlay your vision, or do you have to choose which to focus on, the text, or where you are driving?
Posted by michaellashinsky@...
Updated - 11th Dec
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