/ News
Tactile contact lens lets you feel the world with your eyeball
An Israeli professor has developed a tactile contact lens that translates images recorded on camera into tactile sensations on the cornea to allow the blind to "see" objects.
Professor Zeev Zalevsky, head of "Electro-Optics" in the faculty of engineering at Bar Ilan University has built a prototype that will physically press images onto the surface of the eye in order to help the brain understand through tactile feedback what the person is looking at.
The system takes data from a mounted camera or mobile phone and transmits the encoded image via the contact lens to the wearer's cornea. The tactile sensation can then be interpreted by the wearer's brain so that they can understand what they are looking at. Zalevsky describes the technique as much like learning to read Braille.
Zalevsky hasn't been able to test the contact lens on humans yet, because he hasn't yet received approval to go ahead with the clinical trial, but he has tested an alternative system that uses air pressure instead of direct stimulation on the cornea. This alternative system involved a pair of glasses which had a matrix of small air tubes directed towards the cornea. These tubes were injected with air in such a way that they formed different shapes, creating pressure on the cornea. The people trying the system were able to identify the shapes (admittedly only ten clearly defined icons) with 90 percent accuracy after a few minutes of practice.
"It was much simpler to get the approval for doing the pressure tests on the cornea because [blowing air onto the cornea] is already part of a conventional medical procedure to test for glaucoma," Zalevsky told Wired.co.uk. "For electrical stimulation of the eye you need more complicated regulatory approval, which will take some time."
The contact lens will have electrodes embedded into it which will act like small antennas for electromagnetic waves which will be transferred wirelessly from another device. The camera will capture the image, which will then be processed, compressed and encoded before being transmitted to the contact lens to generate tactile stimulation. Zalevsky suggests that this could be done at around ten frames per second.
The technique is a non-invasive, higher-resolution alternative to artificial retinas that use electrodes to directly stimulate the optic nerves. It will also work for those people who were born blind and so have not developed a visual cortex. In this case, stimulating the retina will not create images in the brain.
Zalevsky's technique is not without its resolution challenges however. Although the cornea is jam packed with nerve endings, it has a problem with two-point discrimination. This is the smallest spatial difference that a person can identify between two sources of stimulation, in this case on the cornea. Zalevsky's team discovered that the two-point discrimination of the cornea from a tactile point of view is less than a millimetre. This means there is a limit to how many pixels can be stimulated on the cornea. Having said that, the cornea is pretty large compared to the macula, which is what those developing bionic retinas have to play with.
Zalevsky believes the system could also be used by people who already see well but want to access supplementary information, in a Google Glass sort of way.
For the time being the focus of Zalevsky's spin-out company, IC Touch, is to raise funding to develop the prototype further and carry out the full clinical trial. "Then we can mature it into a product that will eventually benefit blind people around the world," he told us.
Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-01/30/braille-for-the-eyeballs
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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