Scientists invent micrometers-thin battery charged by saline solution that could power smart contact lenses
(techxplore.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 25 Aug 2023 12:00
https://lemmy.world/post/3805777
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 25 Aug 2023 12:00
https://lemmy.world/post/3805777
Scientists invent micrometers-thin battery charged by saline solution that could power smart contact lenses::Scientists from NTU Singapore have developed a flexible battery as thin as a human cornea, which stores electricity when it is immersed in saline solution, and which could one day power smart contact lenses.
threaded - newest
Hard pass
Who doesn’t want everything you see to be recorded, all while getting an ad overlay directly over your eyes?
While pouring salt into your eyes to power it!
Saline is what you are supposed to wash your eyes out with when you get something in them in addition to being what contacts are stored in every night
Saline is isotonic and, short of a large electrolyte imbalance, shouldn’t cause any/very little irritation to your eyes. And if you’re hyponatremic to the point of saline solution causing eye irritation, you have much more immediate and life threatening problems to attend to than risnsing your peepers out
this type of technology could be revolutionary and restoring people’s eyesight as well
Contacts? Don’t you need to see for them to help
Some “blind” people do have data coming in, it’s just so blurry/skewed that it’s worthless. It might be possible to fix this but it would be a case by case basis and likely very expensive. Not all blindness is a world of black
Even totally blind people can usually detect light as painful, slightly less dark darkness. That’s actually why so many wear dark sunglasses
I could see some cool military applications for this too.
Now you can see your friends dying in the next room, instead of just hearing it!
Or if it’s only a map, now you can see how surrounded your unit is!
This is valuable tactical data, surely it won’t cause any morale issues.
It’s true. All new inventions have a morality issue to them. And those moralities need to be weighed heavily before implementing them.
But it can also be used to guide a secluded operative back to his troop. It can be used to detect road mines that otherwise would have exploded.
New technology is just a tool. It’s the people choosing how to use it that makes it moral/immoral.
You’re not wrong, but the prior comment references “morale issues” which is different from “moral issues” or morality in general. The former is about the troops feeling of well-being and optimism (morale) and the latter is about ethics and right vs wrong (morality).
Heh my bad. Thanks
Listen, all I’m saying is if I was surrounded by enemy combatants on all sides, I wouldn’t want to have to see that while getting shot at.
Also wouldn’t want to see a fellow soldier get gunned down in a little twitch.tv window in my eye while I’m trying to clear a room.
I’d call that a major distraction. And distractions in combat get people killed when otherwise they might have lived.
Maybe smart contacts would have some use for NCOs, even then, a tablet or something with the same info would be just as useful and less likely to block vision. Giving it to everybody would just cause panic and confusion on a battlefield.
How? Bionic ocular implants already exist. A contact lens is not going to be able to restore sight to the blind.
perhaps not to the totally blind but to those that have degenerative diseases contact lenses absolutely can help
Introducing Windows Lens…we see what you see.
Every road sign is replaced with an ad for Bing.
You only have to cry once a day to power your contact lenses!
Perfect for all wage slaves in the us then!
No doubt so we can have ads directly attached to our eyeballs.
Or, we can make an IRL ad-blocker
Can’t even close my eyes to not see ads anymore smh
Very cool technological achievement, but eye-batteries don’t necessarily sound all that safe, non-corrosive/toxic or not, it’s still a constant reaction to create and store electricity in a very vulnerable location.
Doom on lenses when?
I’ll take rating 3 with low light enhancement, image link, and flare compensation.
Would you be able to close your eyes to not see anything/ads? I don’t know much about the tech, but I would assume a light is being emitted from the contact lenses and since that’s behind your eye lids…
I have no idea but I think anything that emit light would drain the battery to quickly.
I would imagine it would more like a e-paper screen.
I have no idea how these work, but one hack idea off the cuff:
You get the light for free. At least when your lids are open; that’s how vision works. A cheap digital watch lasts ages on a tiny coin cell because the polarisation of the LCD, which passes or blocks polarised light, takes minimal energy. Stack up a passive polariser, and the active LCD-like layer, (and maybe a second passive layer?) and you can cast selective shadows on the retina.
This gives you monochrome “smart vision” in the same sense as a monochrome Casio wristwatch. No idea how to tackle issues of focus at such a short focal length, or achieving any sort of active display let alone colour.
Maybe the whole thing is a pipe dream crackpot idea.
Light intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. A light that’s only a few microns away from your cornea would look incredibly bright even with minimal power.
Oh hey look. A solution in search of a problem.
Or a lot of new problems awaiting to happen.
A literal chemical battery in my eyes? No thanks.
Great. Hopefully by the time smart contact lenses come out (if ever) I’ll be dead so I don’t have to worry about another tool that can be used to spy on you for not only the government but for the large tech companies looking for the most intrusive ways to steal your info on the daily.
All is fun and games until you get the blue screen of death.