Virtual Reality May Be Upgrades to... Contact Lenses?
Though it's still too early to get a pulse on user adoption, it's no secret that virtual reality is on a sharp upward trajectory, in terms of technological capabilities, company development, and user interest. Oculus Rift is emerging as the brand to beat in the industry, with competition from major gaming platforms (like PlayStation and Xbox) as well as other tech companies trying to keep up with anticipated growth in user demand.
Other platforms, like Facebook, are actively trying to shape new integrated functions and features that play off of VR's advantages, mutually facilitating the growth of a world connected by virtual reality devices. Accordingly, many marketers, techies, and consumers have attempted to predict the future course for VR technology, most of them focused on external wearable devices like goggles and glasses, but the future may be even closer than that.
Sony's New Patent
Sony was recently awarded a patent for a type of contact lens that can actively record whatever you see. Though intuitively, you might think of this functioning as a kind of constant live-stream feed, like Periscope or Meerkat, it can also be used to selectively capture images and video. Tiny sensors in the lens will be developed to discern the difference between voluntary and involuntary blinking patterns, essentially allowing the wearers to actively control when and how images are captured. To make things even more interesting, specialized piezoelectric mechanisms would capture movements of the eye and convert them into electricity, allowing basic eye movements to power the lens directly.
This technology hasn't yet been developed, and will likely take a long course of research and experimentation before it makes its way into the hands—and eyes—of consumers. However, this outline could prove an interesting model, especially when combined with some of the other contact lens-based technologies rumored to be in development.
Other Contact Lens Technologies
Sony isn't the only company looking to develop some kind of contact lens-based camera. In fact, Google announced some level of development for a contact lens camera not long after they pulled the final plug on Google Glass back in 2014. Google owns a patent for a similar, yet distinct type of contact lens similarly controlled by manual blinking.
In addition, some companies are pursuing "smart" contact lenses, whose focus and range can adjust automatically or based on inputs from the user. In these cases, contact lenses could adapt dynamically to a number of different situations, helping users change from near vision to distance vision, and possibly even providing a telescoping effect.
Perhaps most interesting is the forays Google and other companies are making into contact lenses capable of projecting a kind of heads-up display (HUD) to modify the physical world. This would be a type of augmented reality, rather than wholly virtual reality, but the jump from one to the other is a somewhat miniscule one. Samsung and other technology companies have gotten on board with this concept, entering these ideas into development while consumers are chasing down the latest gargantuan headset to put over their eyes.
Timelines and Future
It's hard to say exactly how smart contact lenses will develop, since so many companies are developing them from so many different angles, but it's almost certain that contact lenses will represent the future of how we engage with our world. It may start with higher forms of vision improvement, augmented reality, virtual reality, or some dynamic blend of the three, but in any case, consumers will likely start seeing the world in new ways within the next three years—maybe even sooner as the competition motivates the timelines of these major companies.
