Google Files Patent For Injecting A Device Directly Into Your Eyeball (gizmodo.com) 51
An anonymous reader writes: It's no secret Google and their parent company Alphabet are interested in developing smart contact lenses for monitoring diabetes. Well, Google-parent Alphabet has filed a patent which takes their development to another level. The patent specifically covers a method for "injecting a fluid into a lens capsule of an eye, wherein a natural lens of the eye has been removed from the lens capsule." It's powered by "radio frequency energy" received by a small antenna inside. The gadget even has its own data storage. Forbes reports, it is designed to help the focusing of light onto the retina, resulting in the correction of poor vision. Samsung is one of the most recent companies to receive a patent for smart contact lenses. Their lenses are for experimenting with new methods of delivering augmented reality interfaces and data.
Re: (Score:3)
It's only one step up from current lens replacement in cases of cataracts, which involves sucking out the old lens and inserting a folded lens.
Of course, with this new device, here's hoping nobody hacks your software. And if it's going to be powered by radio waves, you're either going to have to wear some sort of glasses to hide the battery and antenna, or look like a Borg.
contact lens surgery is done by MDs, not geeks (Score:2)
and I prefer to leave it that way. as a ham, I am likely to eff up my eyes when I key the rig. no, not ever, never, ain't coming near here.
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as a ham, I am likely to eff up my eyes when I key the rig. no, not ever, never, ain't coming near here.
Unlikely. You would have to be transmitting with more power than the lens can handle at exactly the right frequency. With QI chargers, this frequency is such that it cannot travel very far, in the case of a lens, who knows what frequency they would use.
Do you worry about your computer exploding because you transmit on the wifi frequencies?
Re: this makes total sense... (Score:2)
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Google: "We are Borg, you will be assimilated, resistance is futile"
I can't wait (Score:1)
The trademark battle over "eyePhone" should be fun to watch!
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"Think about a smart fluid which could be made much more viscous by a radio signal. "
But make sure that you get back all copies of the penile remote in your divorce settlement. In the middle of a hot date, you wouldn't want your ex pressing the 'deflate' button.
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Should not be seen together (Score:2)
"patent"
"radio frequency energy"
"injecting a fluid into a lens capsule of an eye"
"My eyeball"
No thank you very much.
"The gadget even has its own data storage" (Score:2)
Prior Art from Futurama... (Score:2)
I don't care... (Score:2)
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That would be the Apple iButt.
I'm excited and scared (Score:2)
It sounds like a potentially amazingly cool idea but I'm scared that being done by Google automatically means that it would also be scraping every bit of your life for data and feeding you ads all in a very non-opt-out kinda way.
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It sounds like a potentially amazingly cool idea but I'm scared that being done by Google automatically means that it would also be scraping every bit of your life for data and feeding you ads all in a very non-opt-out kinda way.
You fundamentally misunderstand Google as a company. Google isn't an advertising company, it's a technology company that has many products which happen to be most effectively monetized by advertising. Not all of Google's products are monetized by advertising, and Google neither advertises on nor collects user data from those that aren't monetized that way. In fact, Google is increasingly focused on moving away from the advertising-supported model, by focusing product development on products which can be lic
new revenue stream .. (Score:1)
ya that is ads delivered directly to the eye ball
-- won't start that way
hijacking your focal distance at active ad length --
but eventually direct to the eye ..
It's not shocking, and I'll tell you what it does (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA expressed shock that someone might have their natural lens removed. This is a routine operation [wikipedia.org], usually done because of cataracts.
My wife has had this done. She developed cataracts at a relatively young age, and they got bad enough that the insurance company signed off on the cataract surgery.
Noteworthy in my wife's case: we paid the extra money to get a vision-correcting lens in each eye. The usual replacement lens is a neutral lens, but her eyes are now correcting her vision from the inside. Before she had this procedure, she needed glasses all the time for everything. (Or contact lenses of course.) After the procedure, she only needs glasses for reading; they had to pick a distance for the correction to work at, and the default is to leave you able to walk around and drive and such without glasses, but need glasses to read. (Makes sense to me!)
She now has the best vision she has ever had in her life. She grumbles about needing reading glasses but I remind her she used to need glasses all the time for everything; this is a win.
I am seriously considering having this done myself as an elective procedure. I have some presbyopia [wikipedia.org] and I now need glasses to read fine print. There are artificial lenses available that are flexible and restore the ability to focus on near things; these are called accommodating intra-ocular lenses (IOLs) [wikipedia.org]. It would be nice to get my close-up vision back. In the USA the available accommodating IOL is called the Crystalens [crystalens.com].
I have been calling my wife a "cyborg" as she now has technological lenses rather than natural ones.
Returning to the news story: TFA is absolutely terrible, just awful. It fails to answer the most basic question: what is the purpose of this invention? The link given in TFS shows what seems to be a one-page PDF, but if you use the crude-looking navigation controls on the left you can browse forward and backward through the patent.
http://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?docid=20160113760 [uspto.gov]
Pub. No.: US 2016/0113760 A1
Pub. Date: Apr. 28, 2016
Filed: Oct. 24, 2014
Here's the abstract. The PDF appears to be all image, no selectable text, so I just typed all this in.
If I'm understanding that correctly, this is a very complicated way to get a lens that adjusts its focus in response to the normal movements of muscles in the eye to adjust focus.
I don't know why someone would want this rather than a purely passive device like a CrystalLens. I guess this would be more fine-tunable, so might provide the ultimate in vision focus; but it's tremendously more complex and would seem to require an external power supply, rather than being a simple piece of flexible clear material (of just the right shape and implanted in just the right place).
Speculation: this m
Hmmm (Score:1)
Googlework Orange
This appears to be a RF-powered accommodative IOL (Score:1)
Prior Art? (Score:2)
The Six Million Dollar Man TV show had a bionic eye – in 1973 for fsck sake.
*My* eyeball? (Score:2)
Google Files Patent For Injecting A Device Directly Into Your Eyeball
What, named me personally, did they?
Please stop letting through headlines with "you" and "your" in them without a second glance. It's a clickbait tactic, regardless of the merit of the story.
What it really should read (Score:2)
Google and Samsung file for patents for injecting targeted ads directly into your eyeballs, so you can't ignore them even if you close your eyes
And you thought pop-up ads in your web browser were bad.
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anti-obscenity laws in Utah
That's hilarious. Mormons are some of the biggest hypocrites I've ever seen, and Utah tried to secede from the United States some years ago.
One small step closer... (Score:2)
...to LASER EYES!!