Thursday, July 4, 2013
Scientists made a prototype contact lens and glasses system that enables you to zoom in on a specific thing to 2.8 times magnification. The lenses perform the zooming, while the glasses allow you to shift between normal and magnified sight. At this time, the lens' technical engineers, a group with members from California and Switzerland, are developing it for those who have age related macular degeneration , which happens to be the number one reason for eyesight loss in Americans older than 60. The technical engineers are actually preparing to begin a clinical experiment in November, the BBC said.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded the groundwork, recommending that the U.S. government is eying super vision of soldiers in the near future. But, it really must be better to create something for macular degeneration first, since it's better to come up with a possible remedy for eyesight loss compared to it is to improve on healthy eyesight, the BBC said. The lens is composed of concentric regions. The center region allows light through normally, for regular eyesight. Whereas, the corners of the lens are purposely designed to reflect light as well as magnify it. The final lens is 1.17 millimeters at the thickest region around the corners and it's manufactured from the similar hard plastic as first-generation contact lenses, the technical engineers explained in a paper they published in the journal Optics Express.
Image: extremetech.com
The glasses function by adding or taking out a polarized light filter onto their lenses. With the filter on, light would travel to the normal region of the lens. Without the filter, light would go to the magnifying region rather.
Via: popsci.com