Aussie Government Offers $40M To Build a Bionic Eye

An anonymous reader writes "The Australian Government is keen to replicate the success of the Cochlear Implant (bionic ear) by throwing AU$50M (US$40M) of funding at the development of a bionic eye. Bionic eyes have been trialed with some success in the UK — with recipients able to detect senses of shape and space, but very little detail."

Re:Won't this fail for simple biological reasons?

[SEWilco]

The fact that someone was able to decode a cat's optic nerve [slashdot.org] shows that the signaling on the nerve is somewhat understood. So maybe we need a suitable encoder in order to feed video to an optic nerve. There might be other problems, such as whether an optic nerve remains functional after the eye fails.