Augmented Reality In a Contact Lens 196
Toe, The writes "Bionanotechnology researcher Babak A Parviz writes about his research toward producing a computer interface in a contact lens. At the moment, they have only embedded a single LED, but they foresee a much more complex interface such as detailed in Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. Such lenses potentially could also read human bio-information from the eye, providing medical information on the order of what is now taken from blood tests, but on a continuous basis. An example would be monitoring glucose levels for diabetics. The author states that, 'All the basic technologies needed to build functional contact lenses are in place,' and details what refinements and advances will be necessary to bring this technology to reality."
Cool (Score:3, Funny)
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Mine holds by itself [wikipedia.org].
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That [andreaharner.com] was you??
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There was a slashdot discussion some time ago about something related (or maybe this is a dup, I don't know), and several people wondered when we would have augmented reality in a contact lens. Not there yet if they only have one LCD, but I can see having these things implanted in your eye [slashdot.org]. I already have "augmented vision" from an implant - I got a CrystaLens implant in my left eye back in 2006. That eye now has better then 20/20 vision (although the surgeon said most people are lucky to get 20/20). You wi
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It will still happen. ...
The day an implant will give a better result than glasses / lenses someone will do it.
Need to upgrade an old implant? Replace the eye...
Need to upgrade that old, out of date eye replacement and the fried nerve endings? Direct brain interface...
Need to replace that worn old body
In a hundred years time your "There's no place in the human body for an upgrade slot" will be hold in the same regard as we have for the Amish lifestyle.
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You already can. MVIS Microvision has a patent on a laser or LED scanning system that can theortically paint each rod and cone a different color. It can do focus, depth of field, & etc.
A 21st Century Contact Lens (Score:5, Informative)
Here's an illustration [ieee.org] that explains it all in a glance.
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I suppose that the micro-lenses focus the output of a LED directly on the retina but do not see how LCD type displays referred to in TFS can work. Anyone?
The problem for those who have not realized it is that LCDs in contact lenses are too close to the eye to work. They would subtract some light but be invisible much like a screen is when you put your face up to it & focus outside.
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I suppose they'd have to use some sort of holographic optics to form a virtual image at a distance. I think this is possible, but it's not my field. Besides, for good AR, you want to be able to layer dark as well as bright images. When you're flying through a daylit cloud, your overlays should be black.
Retinal projection displays are overrated in my experience. They throw your eye's imperfections into overwhelming, distracting relief.
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Maybe, but that's an awfully complex problem, especially since you only want to correct for some of the imperfections -- the ones your brain isn't already dynamically mapping out. I don't know which will come first, the technology to do that, or the technology to go directly into the cortex.
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One way to do that is to employ an array of even smaller lenses placed on the surface of the contact lens. Arrays of such microlenses have been used in the past to focus lasers and, in photolithography, to draw patterns of light on a photoresist. On a contact lens, each pixel or small group of pixels would be assigned to a microlens placed between the eye and the pixels. Spacing a pixel and a microlens 360 micrometers apart would be enough to push back the virtual image and let the eye focus on it easily. To the wearer, the image would seem to hang in space about half a meter away, depending on the microlens.
A better suggestion for power: (Score:5, Interesting)
Blinks. Leech kinetic energy from the eyelid. Teeny-tiny stick-on magnets go on the outside of your eyelid; they'll be the next fashion statement. Every time you blink, it induces a current pulse in the lens pickup coils.
For that matter, it might be possible to collect energy from saccades and other natural eye movements. That's potentially a higher-res and lower-latency method for eye-tracking than cameras, which you'll need for AR, and if you can harvest energy to boot, so much the better!
I don't have the physics/EE chops to run the numbers, but I'll bet you'd get more power this way than from a "solar cell module". (Who wants to keep their eyes wide open and directed toward a bright light source?)
Re:A better suggestion for power: (Score:5, Interesting)
the cells in the cornea are fed not by blood vessels (which wouldn't be transparent) but get their oxygen from the air, and their nutrients and sugars from your tears. The lens could do the same thing.
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How about that, the more you know
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Why not just replace the whole eye, or at least the lens part of it?
Almost everyone over 50 has some vision issues, and many people much younger than that. Plus, you could add features like zoom or filters.
That's the future - replacing parts of the body with better synthetic ones.
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They are definitely working hard on artificial sight. However it will be quite a while before artificial sight will be near as good as natural sight. Certainly I'm not an expert, but I do find the field fascinating. Slashdot user BWJones is one of the field's prominent researchers, working for the University of Utah.
There's a number of things which prohibit us from being able to produce drop-in replacements for eyeballs. One of which, for example, is that the precise nature of the work that the retina d
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I see what you mean. That's why I suggested just replacing the lens, since it's much simpler and the retina is far less prone to developing problems.
I think that inevitably such enhancements will become pretty much a requirement for most people. It will simple become impossible to compete with people who have them if you don't.
What worries more far more than that though is the thought that it will become possible to record everything you see. Think CCTV is bad now? One day a person will be able to record an
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I mean, a heads-up display telling you what your BAC is would be nice and all, but I think we should be using biological interfaces with machines to fix systems that are actually broken first.
I sympathize with your predicament, and I want to see a lot more resources going into neurological interfacing and repair.
I also very much appreciate my own largely-intact nervous system, and my more-or-less-correctable-to-"normal" vision. However, I think a visual system that's only correctable to 20/20 or so, only resolves three widely-overlapping color bands (and can't focus one of them worth squat), needs 15-30 minutes for full dark adaptation, is subject to irreversible damage from common light source
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Humans have had the same vision since they've been homo sapien sapiens (at least), so I think they can wait a little longer for x-ray vision. :)
From my perspective, it's more like "we've been waiting for an upgrade since before we existed as a species; that's long enough!"
I'm enthusiastic about the idea of having better vision at age 70 than at my current 46. I'm not exactly a practicing transhumanist, but we really are starting to see some interesting shadows and shafts of light emanating from just beyond the horizon.
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There are several organs (tonsils, appendix, etc.) that people don't necessarily need (or where keeping them leads to more harm than good), but that doesn't mean doctors pre-emptively yank them out.
Well, apart from the foreskin, maybe.
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I've got all those! (Score:3, Funny)
Heinsenberg compensator = Registered ECC setup for RAM.
Zero-point module: processor with no floating point instructions.
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Interesting. I have a drawing like that in my idea book. It's now two years old, and it's better, because the electronics cover only the area of the display, and nothing else. So if you can make them see-trough, you're done. You would have to lay them on top of each other anyway, as soon as you'd cover the whole field of view.
I can also cut a cavity in a lens, glue an LED into it, and put some wires on it. Or make a small non-tranparent integrated circuit, and glue it between two lenses. That's not hard. Ev
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Solar cells.
I could just see the warning on the HUD now:
"WARNING, battery low, please look directly at the sun to recharge capacity."
yes! (Score:4, Interesting)
But they're gonna have to figure out a) how to power it and b) how to transmit the data to these devices. That is true tech challenge.
Re:yes! (Score:4, Funny)
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No no no no no
It'll be used to present a VR overlay ("skin") on your generic sex-bot, which will be printed with a pattern that the lenses can easily recognize so it can correctly orient the 3-D model. Get bored with the Angelina Jolie skin? Fick your eyes to the side to cycle forward to the Cindy Crawford skin in mid-stroke!
Holy shit, I think I need to patent that...
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Eh, I was gonna type Heidi Klum instead but I couldn't remember how to spell it (not even sure if that one's right).
Crawford's prime was a bit before my time, but yet timeless :)
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Yeah, and then you get the bright idea to give it gigantic breasts, reach over slowly and with excitement to enjoy your newfound toys, and find only disappointment and the disconcerting appearance of your hands buried halfway into another person (unless you happen to like that sort of thing, of course).
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Yeah, it'd have to either be limited to the body type of your sex-bot model (perhaps with modular parts, so you can have a couple of boob sizes for it and just put on whichever type you feel like that day) or the bot would have to be able to expand/contract in some places, which is probably not practical if you want to make it feel at all skin-like.
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Just imagine that chick watching your portfolio performance while she tags you.
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Anyway, I got the impression that the lens would communicate via radio frequency and presumably get its power the same way. They didn't really go into much technical detail on that, so I may be assuming too much. Tech like this would be beyond cool if they get it to work, but honestly I was left with the impression that its no
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TFA did mention that they are powering the current version via RF. (RF being the same as the RF in RFID)
The power problem. (Score:2)
RF also being 'shooting radio waves directly into your eyeball'.
The eyes are more sensitive to radiation than any part of the body. The prospect of this power source causing cataracts and other eye damage is higher than in other body parts -- even non-ionizing radiation can harm the delicate lens, which has no thermal control. There are also possible problems caused by element heating.
I'm skeptical that this technology will ever pan out. At least, not until we redesign and replace the eye.
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Chief, we are talking about contacts with embedded circuitry in them. And your worry is that non-directed radio waves (being the exact nature of RF) are going to fry your eyeballs? Despite the fact that your cellphone has to pump out far more radio waves in the vicinity of your head (and thus eyeballs) to maintain a connection with the tower?
Really? What is it about these 'magic' invisible waves that cause some people to automaticly disengage their rational thought process.
If you are going to go luddite on
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Key words: 'In the vicinity'.
The effects of radiation scale as one over the distance squared. It's one thing to have a cell phone antennae 2-3 cm from your ear, another 2-3 cm from brain tissue, and another 6-8 cm from your eye. It's another thing to have a transceiver in contact with the eye lens.
(Someone will say that it's a passive receiver. If true, forget detecting the position of the eyeball, so forget reality overlays. It'll have to transmit for all that to work.)
I agree that there are a lot of
I have a request. (Score:4, Funny)
Can I just get a contact lens with cross-hairs in it?
Why yes. I do play Quake III Arena often. Why do you ask?
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You mean like this [racheshop.de]?
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Yes, probably at WalMart. They have snake-eyes and all sorts of halloweenish contact lenses, and as they don't correct vision you don't need a prescription. I'm thinking of getting either a pair of snake eyes, or a pair with red irises for Halloween. They cost about thirty bucks or so.
Small steps. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Agreed; something like the Myvu Crystal with decent resolution (640 lines is NOT enough for everyone; double it and I'll buy it tomorrow) should be possible and wouldn't require a prescription (or eyedrops). For extra fun, add a couple of accelerometers for head-tracking and you can use the old X-windows "slide the viewport around" trick. Add a small bluetooth keyboard, and you've got a mini-office anywhere you've got a chair.
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I'd be happy just to have the usable interface ;)
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I'd be happy just to have a usable interface in a pair of normal glasses (non-correcting).
Ditto. I have extreme eye contact phobia and the thought of contacts gives me the willies with a touch of the heebie-jeebies. But I can totally dig standard glasses.
Another inevitable function of this... (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be like Tivo for your life.
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With respect, I doubt that'll be in the 'near' future for these. The problem with recording video is that you actually have to capture the photons to do that. Capture the photons on the recording media, and they are no longer available for the eye to 'see'. The non-contact versions of 'eye mounted' HUDs that I've seen get around this by using a complex setup to split the image into two, but from what I understand of that, it'd be practically impossible to use the same method for a contact.
I suppose another
There are lots of photons to go around. (Score:3, Interesting)
Divert 10% of the incoming light to a recorder, and the wearer will never notice. Put the sensors on the outside face of some of the opaque lens components. Or put them around the periphery. There's no way you're going to do AR without a way to detect and analyze the "R" that you're "A"ing, anyhow.
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Re:Another inevitable function of this... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Interesting objection, but easy to overcome. You do realize that the lens also will also have the ability to project light into the eye, right? So why not just project the capture back into the eye? In fact, this could be a feature. The user would hav
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"computer-mediated reality" / "augmented reality"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyetap [wikipedia.org]
Re:Another inevitable function of this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Contact lenses cover more than the pupil. A recording device located over the iris would not interfere with vision.
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Good point, I guess my only remaining objection would be bandwidth issues with getting the info from the eye to you 'image processing' unit. Given these contacts aren't going to be running AA's in them, and given that this is going to be a two way communication, it might be more advisable to do the 'image collection' someplace else.
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You can see through a screen door, can't you? The same would apply. Although for recording, I think glasses (sunglasses) would be better.
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Ugh. 100ms is nasty on all sorts of levels. Yes, the processing latency inside your head is worse than that in general -- but it's all finely tuned in wetware that's evolved over millions of years, and for the most part you can't just "adapt" to throwing another 100ms into the stovepipe. (Conversely, once we start tapping more directly into the visual cortex, taking away latency will be similarly fraught with risk.)
OTOH, we've already got consumer cameras doing 1000fps capture, and there's no reason in p
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Your parole officer would like that!
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Actually, I was thinking more in the direction of "And here I am, banging my super-hot ex-girlfriend for the 1st time...when we were 18."
I know, this is Slashdot, so that scenario wouldn't really apply to anyone here. The driving one, how ever...
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Actually, I was thinking more in the direction of "And here I am, banging my super-hot ex-girlfriend for the 1st time...when we were 18."
Oh, great.
"Oh, you're wearing contacts? Yeah, they'll have to come off before you see me naked. Yes, every time. I don't want my boobs all over the internet, thank you very much. And we're screwing in the dark, just in case."
This kind of technology could lead to people actually having sex, but never ever properly seeing their partner naked.
OTOH, it could reduce shyness, I suppose...
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Precisely why we need augmented reality. Imagine the hilarity when your co-workers as a joke hack your contacts so you see a herd of rabid monkeys running down the hall towards you while monkey sounds play on your ipod implants! That would really reduce the boredom of work!
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Eye Fatigue, Ailments, Psychosis... (Score:2, Interesting)
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now anyone can be (Score:3, Funny)
Hero (Score:2)
I just want an added twinkle to my eye... maybe something for my teeth as well.
Why aug? (Score:3, Funny)
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trust me, most of augmented reality will be demented.
Re:Why aug? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf mutes!
Stamp out Reality! (Score:2)
Why go for an augmented reality when you can have a demented reality?
Exactly what I have always thought! Virtual reality tech would be best employed helping me to function in "the real world", while eliminating much of the harsh unpleasantness and petty annoyances entailed by said reality. It might be tempting, for example, to have my VR contacts and earplugs filter out people I don't like (e.g. the PHB), but such an "ignore list" could lead to collision problems, not to mention losing my job. However, it would definitely be more fun if I could see the PHB as Donald Duck or
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But you already have that! It's called "TV"!
And I hear it's quite popular too!
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Any day now (Score:2)
Science Reporting At Its Best (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Science Reporting At Its Best (Score:4, Funny)
IOL not contacts! (Score:2)
Let me know when I can get replacement lenses (IOL) with all this and more in it.
IOL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraocular_lens [wikipedia.org]
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvmENasDFMw [youtube.com]
I can't wait for the first hacker (Score:4, Interesting)
I really can't wait for the first hacker who manages to hack someone else's lens to output an extremely bright light to the wearer...
so that he has to remove those lens, because the natural reflex of closing the eye is totally useless!
When you're arrested by the cops: "my lenses were hacked! i really didn't see that stop sign!"
Or: "cause of death: blinded by his lenses while driving"
Such an interesting future is coming towards us!
Ghost in the Shell (Score:3, Insightful)
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Actually I much prefer the GiTS vision of the future over any other that I'v seen. I look forward to the day when I can no longer tell where my brain ends and the computer begins. Maybe when everyone can have their bodies enhanced in what ever way you want them to be then people can truly be judged by the content of their character.
Cybernetic Eyes (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget a contact on my eye - replace the whole eyeball. Give me low light, infrared, light reduction, bloom compensation, microscope and telescope functions, facial recognition, recording, playback, computer display link, etc.
Pretty much everyone needs glasses by 40 anyway, why not just get new eyes when you're 18?
I know we're a long way off from being able to plug a camera directly into the optic nerve, but when that day comes I'm up for it.
A on-eye web browser! It would take... (Score:2, Funny)
... goatse.cx to a whole new level.
Sounds Familiar (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
I deeply fear an Elmo belief circle.
Just wrote a review of Rainbows End (Score:2)
Oddly enough, I just wrote a fairly lengthy review of Rainbows End [teleread.org] over on TeleRead.org. Submitted it to Slashdot; it's still pending. (I'm not optimistic, but it was worth a try.) I talk some about the book, and about how Vernor Vinge's ideas for "the book of the future" have been evolving and changing since True Names.
It'll be fascinating if this technology actually starts to show up in real life.
Further challenges (Score:4, Informative)
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If there was a good way for contact orientation to be maintained, bifocal contact lenses would be a reality already.
This isn't something I know much about, but googling seems to indicate that bifocal contact lenses do in fact exist:
http://www.allaboutvision.com/contacts/bifocals.htm [allaboutvision.com]
http://www.contactlenses.org/bifocal_contact_lenses.htm [contactlenses.org]
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I think I see what you're missing. The contact lens is so close to the eye's lens that it doesn't really matter exactly where the lens sits. Yes, it drifts around, as you've seen on video; no, that doesn't make a significant difference in what you see.
Toric lenses are heavier at the bottom, so they naturally orient themselves properly. They'll be off by a few degrees more often than not, but for correcting astigmatism, that's completely unnoticeable.
Bifocal contact lenses can't work like bifocal glasses,
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Cool link -- thanks! It's easy to see why some people conclude it was all intelligently designed -- especially in light of the Gospel delivered by His Son, Rube Goldberg.
Wow... (Score:2)
1 LED embedded in a contact lens. VGA resolution is now only 5 orders of magnitude away. Better start coding those augmented reality apps!
Vertical Stability and Durability (Score:3, Insightful)
One problem with this is that contact lenses float on your eye and are not stationary. This is a serious problem, because to keep a constant orientation, you'll either need to constantly rotate any light emitters to stay in the same place (probably not possible), or weight the contact lens as is currently done with astigmatic lenses (not a great solution).
Apart from this, contact lenses tear, break, get lost, etc... At the moment, my soft lenses cost $5 apiece. If one tears, gets lost, or something else equally destructive, it's not a problem. If the same lens cost $1000, that would be a much bigger problem. And I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. If you make the lenses soft, they'll degrade quickly (as current soft lenses do). If you make them hard, then they will fall, get scratched, and the like over the long term.
that's the easy part (Score:2)
Although putting a single LED into a contact lens is already an achievement, it's not the hard part. As the article points out: power and focusing are major problems, with no plausible solution in sight.
The people to whom the accolades should go are those who finally manage to put it all together, not the people who put together a tiny bit of the technology.
The idea itself, of course, is nearly as old as contact lenses and has appeared in many science fiction stories.
Use in scifi? (Score:2)
A bit off-topic, but has science fiction dealt with such things as augmented reality in the eye? It just occurred to me that it could be interesting to explore the possibilities of people living in an augmented world where the most important stuff cannot be seen (like other people who might not be present and just "augmented", like holograms).
Although that would probably turn into just another dystopia future thingie, cause when you think about it, what are you going to do with a new tech as the basis of
What about the cabling? (Score:2)
I'm not even worried about the contact lens floating - how are you going to cable this? It needs power, and unless someone simultaneously invents a saline based generator you'll need to connect it somewhere.
I'll be really impressed if they solve that, so far it's not even interesting..
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They used this technology only a couple of months ago in Torchwood : Children of Earth [wikipedia.org]
Yup, and Babak Parviz was so inspired by that episode that he developed and has even started testing this device in less than 2 months. Yup. That's what happened.
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There are some implants like this, but they have VERY few pixels (64x64 IIRC).
Also, the "existing data stream" for a human is fairly complex (lots of processing done in the retina) and quite idiosyncratic (each neural net had its own training set, after all); dealing with the blind is far easier, since they will just learn the new data streams from scratch.