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NASA's new sleeping bags could prevent eyeball 'squashing' on the ISS
Researchers from have developed a sleeping bag that that could prevent or reduce vision problems by effectively sucking fluid out of astronauts' heads.
Patient receives the world's first fully 3D-printed prosthetic eye
A patient has been fitted with a highly realistic 3D printed prosthetic eye for the first time ever.
Second Sight retinal prosthesis cleared for sale in Europe, a better one already in development
We'd bother with the obvious, but there's no sense in acting exasperated that this thing is finally shipping -- let's just be glad it didn't take a day longer, shall we? Second Sight, a California-based company aiming to help those with degenerative eye disease by way of technology, has finally seen its flagship product approved for "clinical and commercial use" in Europe. The product is the Argus II, and for all intents and purposes, it's a retinal prosthesis (read: implant) that can at least partially restore lost vision. It works a little like this: patients don the camera-laden glasses, where signals are grabbed and fed wirelessly to a chip implanted near ones retina. The information is beamed to around 60 electrodes that "stimulate retinal cells, producing light in a patient's view." According to Technology Review, "the process works for people with retinitis pigmentosa because the disease damages only the light-sensing photoreceptors, leaving the remaining retinal cells healthy." For now, the $115,000 device will only be available through a smattering of clinics in Switzerland, France and the UK. If all goes well, it'll be actively seeking FDA approval next year for use in the US of A, and a version with way more electrodes shouldn't be too far behind.
Eye Mario System enables your face to control any NES game (video)
We'll be straight with you -- prior to this fine day, we'd never heard of the whiz kids at Waterloo Labs, but we'll be keeping our focus locked on their initiatives from this point forward. Why, you ask? Just look at that bloke above, who is in the middle of asking Mario to leap over a tunnel with a simple eye movement. Granted, we've seen eye-controlled interfaces before, but there's just something -- shall we say... inspirational -- about being able to control your favorite NES titles with your own face. Better still, the crew is providing the full blown how-to down in the source, and if you're not a fan of strapping an array of electrodes on your person, you still owe it to yourself to peek the video past the break. Oh, and it's good to see these guys still have to blow on their NES cartridges to get 'em to work right -- misery adores company, eh?
NTT DoCoMo's eye-controlled music interface evolves at CEATEC (video)
NTT DoCoMo's R&D labs are amongst the busiest in the world, and here at CEATEC the company is showing off a development that it has had in the oven for quite some time. The difference now? Elegance. The eye-controlled music interface that we first spotted in mid-2008 is being showcased yet again here at the Makuhari Messe, but instead of having a short straw-drawing employee stand around with an absurd amount of headgear on, this year's demonstrator was equipped with little more than a special set of earbuds, a few cables and a swank polo. Put simply, the contraption watched subtle changes in eye movements and altered the music accordingly. A look to the right moved the track forward, while a glance to the left went back a track. The demo seemed buttery smooth, but there's still no telling when this stuff will go commercial. Still, progress is progress, and there's a video after the break showing as much. %Gallery-74737%
Blue's Eyeball webcam and Mikey iPod mic are made for digital crooners
We're digging this classic recording studio look, which is a throwback to Blue's history with stylized Hi-Fi microphones. These guys started to build a bridge between their old stomping grounds and the new-to-them frontier of consumer electronics with the Snowball microphone and that Icicle USB XLR adapter we saw today, and now they've introduced the Eyeball ($99.99), a Super HD webcam that retracts its lens for privacy, and the Mikey iPod mic ($79.99) with a built-in speaker, three gain settings, and a positionable head. Mikey doesn't play nice with the iPod Touch, but it works with all the other models 4G and up, as well as the 2 and 3G Nanos. Features on both are mostly the standard set, but Blue's obviously putting an emphasis on audio quality, and we'll give extra points for style.
5.5 designers put eyeball details on lamps, weird us out
It's hard to say what kind of individual seeks out lighting instruments that even look like eyes, let alone lighting instruments with cloned details of their own eyes, but just in case you know one such person, here's the perfect FYI for 'em. Paris-based 5.5 designers are offering a service that enables you to send in images of your eyes (along with a very large sum of money, we presume) in order for the craftspeople to construct eyeball lamps with hints of you splashed all over. Sure gives Rockwell's one and only jam a whole new meaning, yeah?[Via ShinyShiny]
NTT DoCoMo testing out eye-controlled music interface
If you're scouting the strange, the weird and the weirder, you'll find plenty to get absorbed in over at the research facilities of NTT DoCoMo. The Japanese giant is at it once more, but this time the invention is actually somewhat down to Earth. It's mission? To create a method for easily controlling a music interface (on a PMP or cellphone) with just your eyes. By rolling one's eyes and jerking them from side to side, the outfit is hoping to have the corresponding music player change tracks and get louder / softer. If you're not exactly keen with freaking out fellow citizens on the street with completely erratic eye movements, you may also appreciate a similar technology it's working up which can detect a user's finger tapping to achieve to same goal. Of course, said technology would be halfway useless on the smash hit-packed ZVUE Journey (no way you're bypassing any of those tracks, son), but we guess you could check out your toes every now and then to keep from constantly staying at 11.[Via ShinyShiny]
Researchers develop eye-implantable camera
Most of the bionic eye systems we've seen involve clunky glasses-cam headgear, but the implantable camera now being developed at UCLA does it straight Terminator-style and keeps your face unencumbered. The camera, which researcher Michelle Hauer and her team recently filed a patent for, is small enough to be implanted directly on the eye's lens, and feeds image data to a chip at the back of the eye, where it can either be fed into the optic nerve to aid the blind, or just into a portable hard drive to aid the creepy. Hauer says power will come from on an onboard battery, but we're more interested in the mention of "optical control signals" in the patent application -- and by "interested" we mean "terrified of a zombie android army."Read - NewScientist blurbRead - Patent application
