科學家發明能夠查看郵件的隱形眼鏡
Emails and text messages could be read on contact lenses linked to the internet, scientists believe.
Researchers constructed a computerised contact lens and demonstrated its safety by testing it on live eyes, and there were no signs of adverse side effects.
At the moment, the contact lens device contains only a single pixel, but the researchers see this as a "proof-of-concept" for producing lenses with multiple pixels which, in their hundreds, could be used to display short emails and text messages right before your eyes.
The researchers said the device could overlay computer-generated visual information on to the real world and be of use in gaming devices and navigation systems.
It could also be linked to the user's body to provide up-to-date information on glucose or lactate levels, which could prove medically important.
The contact lens created by researchers at the University of Washington and Aalto University, Finland, consists of an antenna to harvest power sent out by an external source, as well as an integrated circuit to store this energy and transfer it to a transparent sapphire chip containing a single blue LED.
One major problem the researchers had to overcome was the fact that the human eye, with its minimum focal distance of several centimetres, cannot resolve objects on a contact lens. Any information projected on to the lens would probably appear blurry.
To combat this, the researchers incorporated a set of Fresnel lenses into the device; these are much thinner and flatter than conventional bulky lenses, and were used to focus the projected image on to the retina.據英國《每日電訊報》11月22日報道，科學家們相信，人們可以通過連接到因特網的隱形眼鏡來讀取郵件和短信。
研究人員製造了一種計算機化的隱形眼鏡，並宣稱已經通過肉眼使用的安全測試，沒有產生不良副作用的跡象。
目前，這種隱形眼鏡只是單像素的，但是研究人員將其看作是一種“概念的證明”，證明能夠生產出多像素的鏡頭，擁有數以百計的像素，可以就在你的眼前顯示簡短的郵件和短消息。
研究人員說，這種設備可以將電腦生成的視覺信息覆蓋於真實世界的景觀之上，能夠用於遊戲設備和導航系統。
它還能與使用者的身體連接，隨時提供有關葡萄糖和乳酸水平的最新信息，這也證明在醫學上很重要。
這種隱形眼鏡是由來自華盛頓大學和芬蘭阿爾託大學的研究人員共同創造的，其組成部分包括一根用來接收外界信息來源發出的能量的天線，以及一個集成電路，這一電路會把接收到的能量儲存起來，並將其轉移到一個透明的包含單個藍色二極管的寶石藍芯片上。
研究人員必須解決的一個重要的問題是，人眼的最小焦距是幾釐米，無法分辨出隱形眼鏡上顯示的物體。有可能出現在鏡片上的所有信息都會看起來很模糊。
爲了解決這一問題，研究人員採用了一系列菲涅爾透鏡，這些透鏡比傳統的比較大的鏡片薄得多也平滑得多，可以用來聚焦投影在視網膜上的圖像。
