Sony has been awarded a patent for Smart Contact Lens capable of recording video!
[su_quote cite=”Kivuti” url=”https://medium.com/@nimimikivuti”]Now, with everything going smart, everyday life is becoming just better. What this also offers is a whole new layer of applications that can be added to this to improve what and how the lens captures. This is my thought anyway though at the back of my head I do hope that this will offer more opportunity in how data is mined and sorted in the real world…. hmmmm[/su_quote]
Other smart contact lenses are focused on improving vision or providing an augmented reality HUD, but Sony wants to look outwards rather than in. A new patent, awarded to the company in April, describes a contact lens that can be controlled by the user’s deliberate blinks, recording video on request.
Sensors embedded in the lens are able to detect the difference between voluntary and involuntary blinks. The image capture and storage technology would all be embedded in the lens around the iris, and piezoelectric sensors would convert the movements of the eye into energy to power the lens.
The patent claims: “It is known that a time period of usual blinking is usually 0.2 seconds to 0.4 seconds, and therefore it can be said that, in the case where the time period of blinking exceeds 0.5 seconds, the blinking is conscious blinking that is different from usual blinking (unconscious blinking).”
Another exciting development is that the lenses record images to an internal storage device—a big improvement over other designs, such as Samsung’s, which would transmit images to an external device. It means you can easily and quickly access your recordings.
It’ll even be able to adjust for the tilt of a user’s eye, and use autofocus for blurry images. The technology is all very theoretical and avant-garde right now, but with so many tech companies scrambling to develop and patent the necessary devices, we can probably look forward to seeing these “smart” lenses very soon. Cool, right? well that is what I Though so too!
Of course, at this point, this technology isn’t small enough to be comfortably embedded in a contact lens, so it’s only theoretical. However, with Google seemingly pursuing a contact lens camera after Glass failed so spectacularly, it’s not surprising that other tech giants are getting on board.
