Pentagon Developing Contact Lens HUDs
Gnarly…
Today, a handful of soldiers with advanced gear can see a few digital maps, through helmet-mounted monocles. Some pilots can get data about their world, on heads-up displays. But one day, troops could see an info-”augmented” reality all around them, with contact lenses that provide “first-person shooter-type video game” environments to those that wear them. At least, that’s the idea behind the latest project from DARPA, the Pentagon’s blue sky science and technology division.
The agency’s Information Processing Techniques Office announced Wednesday that it’s looking for information on “the creation of micro- and nano-scale display technologies for the purpose of creating displays that could be worn as transparent contact lenses.” And not in some far-off future. But in “three to five years.”
A limiting factor to untethered augmented and/or mixed reality applications is the bulkiness, power consumption, cost, limited resolution, and limited field of view of head-mounted displays. DARPA seeks to leap beyond incremental, evolutionary enhancement of head-mounted display technologies to a see-through contact lens on which images can be displayed. This information might be command-and-control information, not unlike information provided to players of first-person, shooter-type video games or synthetic entities and effects in a live training environment.
But all kinds of questions remain - from manufacturing to power to wireless data transfer. Even basics, like which display technologies would be used, remain. Maybe lasers, DARPA suggests. Maybe light-emitting diodes. Or maybe something else entirely will give troops this video game vision.
The materials behind real-life invisibility cloaks could even factor in, sorta. DARPA is talking about spending $3 million next year on “transparent displays” — and you’d certainly want your Halo 3-esque contacts to be transparent. The key to those displays would be “metamaterials,” the strange substances that can bend certain frequencies of light around them.
(Wired)
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I wonder if they could even be used to record what the eye sees so nobody would have to write mission reports ever again. And just think…Obama wants to cut funding to military advancements like this. He must not be a sci-fi fan:-)
March 20th, 2008 at 11:39 amThis is just incredible! heads up display contact lenses. I wonder if they could focus in as well like binoculars. mind blowing
March 20th, 2008 at 11:46 amI’ve got this thing about stuff on my eyeballs, but thats just too cool…….
Should be interesting to see how the technology develops.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:04 pmDARPA. I would like to know what they are working and can’t tell us.
March 20th, 2008 at 12:19 pmsteve
March 20th, 2008 at 12:28 pmyou and me both
killswitch ENGAGE ahahah
March 20th, 2008 at 12:38 pmThat is awsome !!
March 20th, 2008 at 12:42 pmKurt;
March 20th, 2008 at 12:51 pmyes, there’s more to this story: super vision research.
Free enterprise, and American ingenuity on full display.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:24 pmNaw New mechanical eye balls will be the way to go.
the contact lense has power, focus, and utility issues. a mechanical eye can focus, magnify, and run programs.
March 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pmHow cool would that be - imagine being able to look at an object, measure the distance to it, mark it on a map and set waypoints to get to it - all in a display that’s in your field of vision when you want it, and turn it off when you don’t.
One thing, though - no digital optics currently available can match the resolution power of the human eye. I’d be interested to see how they integrate the two.
March 20th, 2008 at 3:16 pmThis would be cool. I could watch “Deep Throat” during sex and throw away the Viagra…
March 20th, 2008 at 3:58 pmI’m old, you know…
She’s old too, by the way…
March 20th, 2008 at 4:01 pm