APR 30, 2016

Google Wants to Improve Your Vision With a Device You Inject Into Your Eye

WRITTEN BY: Anthony Bouchard

It was around this time last year when Ocumetrics came up with a new lens design that could give any human being superhuman-like vision, but now Google is working on something similar.
 
Recently un-Earthed patents from the Alphabet-owned tech giant reveal that Google is working on some sort of a visual aide device that can be injected directly into the eyeball that can improve even the worst eyesight.

After the natural lens is removed from the eyeball, the device, which has its own lens, is injected into the eyeball where it essentially replaces the natural lens. It gets power from a special antenna and includes its own storage, battery, sensors, and more.
 
Since a lot of people who go blind or have trouble seeing have this issue due to issues with getting enough light to where it needs to go, Google’s patent seems to detail a digital device that assists with this process.
 
The device is far off from Ocumetrics’ design, which involves just placing a super-powered lens into the eyeball to let the organic parts of the eye continue to do their jobs. Google’s plan is to replace the non-functioning organic matter with that of electronic silicon and circuitry.
 
Because the installation procedure of this digital device from Google would involve replacing a somewhat important part of the human body with something digital, it’s unlikely that many people would even want to have something like this.
 
Nevertheless, it’s always possible that a device like this may never even see the light to the general public, as products are patented all the time and never actually come to fruition.  

Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office via CNET