Having appealed to WIRED magazine founder Kevin Kelly, engineers flocked to her call for ideas, and provided her with a list of features she should be looking for. Well, if you’re going to kit out your body with a high-tech bionic eye, you may as well aim high, right? Personally, I’d love to be able to take geotagged photo simply by blinking my eye, or to capture 720p video on the fly.
Hoping to raise $US15,000 for her new eye, Vlach has already received over $US5000 worth of funding from supportive fans. And if you happen to stump up five grand, you’ll be awarded with your very own souvenir bionic eyeball. You know… just in case. [Kickstarter via LA Times]
TSH
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:56 AMIs $15,000 enough for a bionic eye? Last I heard (granted, it was a couple years ago) we’d only just managed to kit out a retina with a low-resolution “greyscale” sensor. No doubt lens tech is very mature, but $15,000 really doesn’t sound like enough for a decent replacement.
HAVING SAID THAT, engineers are awesome so I’m very willing to be proven wrong!
EckyThump
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 10:37 AMIf she’s after a prosthetic eye that actually sees anything even close to what a cheap camera would, she’s got a long wait. As ‘TSH’ says, the technology is awhile off being market ready! Even a trial patient would only see crude blocky shapes right now!
Nathan
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 11:07 AMI think we should work on other ways to fix sight in the blind. Bionic Eyes may need evasive surgery and could cause issues.
I heard about blind people being given some vision using a camera and some sensors relaying that image through a device attached to the patient that pushed that image onto the skin giving them some form of “vision”.
This was in the 70s-80s when cameras were extremely bulky so it was impractical. With cameras the size they are now surely they could work on this some more to prevent evasive surgery until the micro computers and visual processing is better.
Also imagine in normal sighted people to see behind them, imagine if you could have a rear facing camera and attached to the skin so you could train yourself to see images behind you. Hmm. Never thought of that until now my brain is now spinning out a bit.
justsomeguy
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 2:36 PMinvasive, not evasive
david
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 12:08 PMIt’s totally doable, she doesn’t want an eye that works, she wants a prosthetic eye that takes pictures and records video.
Then when you get home you pop the eye out, plug it in via USB and download your pics and movies.
Plus I am sure there is a red dot in the middle so you could look like a terminator.
If I am right there will be no connection between the bionic eye and the users brain.
Mike
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 1:18 PMThis.