Printing Image on Your Eye

I will be talking a lot about Augmented Reality. This is an exciting feature that recently invaded most of mobile phones running Android or iPhone, with the number of geolocative applications like Layar, Nearest Tube or Accrossair Browser. It is very simple at this stage, you use camera implemented in your phone together with 3G and GPS location information to display various data on the objects surrounding you. Sounds neat, but in practice I found it bizzare. You stand in the middle of the street waving your phone, but then you get access to information quite quickly and visually attached to reality surrounding you. I used Layar and Nearest Places on iPhone, but I found it a short term fascination. Too small, to distractive as an interface, too complex, not exciting enough.

But the potential is there, a massive one.

Augumented reality projected directly to your retina is a very close possibility.

First you got Brother Industries who designed 'retinal image display' (upper image), where a device attached to glasses frame is drawing the image on your retina using a laser.

Second you got those contact lenses from Prof. Parviz at the University of Washington (lower image), who want to print circuits and LED based displays on the contact lens.

Now both devices are certainly in the trial stages, but its a question of 2-3 years before it will be fully developed and tested by the US army, before making it to the market.

Of course that would lead augumented reality into the new stage where you fully incorporate visual display into your daily real world.

[photo credits: Parviz Research Group, University of Washington; Brother]