The Bionic Eye is Here, Almost!

Electronic Eye Camera

Photo above shows an electronic eye camera, developed by scientists at Northwestern University and University of Illinois. It’s a digital camera that has the size, shape and layout of a human eye. The curved shape is meant to greatly improve its field of vision, much like a human eye, bringing the whole picture in focus.

This eye camera is an offshoot of a project done by Yonggang Huang of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who set out to develop a relatively simple solution to the long-running problem of transferring microelectronic components onto a curved surface without breaking them.

They made out a mesh-like material made up of tiny squares that hold the photodetectors and electronic components together. The squares are connected by tiny wires that give each component the ability to mold to a curved surface.

The device could lead to the development of prosthetic devices including a bionic eye, they said.

“Right now we’ve already got a camera working. It works very well with computers. It’s just how to connect the camera to the brain. That is the issue to be solved,” Huang said.

[Via: Reuters]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.