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Google’s plan to cure short-sightedness: replace your eye’s lens with a computerized one

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Google has in the past explored more than one type of electronic contact lens, but a patent published yesterday takes eye-based electronics to a whole new level. The company believes it can cure short-sightedness by removing the inferior biological lenses from your eyes and replacing them with motorized ones controlled by tiny computers.

The planned device […] contains a number of tiny components: storage, sensors, radio, battery and an electronic lens. The eyeball device gets power wirelessly from an “energy harvesting antenna.” The patent describes what looks like an external device to interface with the eyeball computer. The two will communicate through a radio and the ”interface device” contains the processor to do the necessary computing.

The description is not for the squeamish, especially when it comes to the insertion process …

The complete kit is injected into the eyeball as a liquid, and then solidifies once in the eye. Once solidified, it works in the same way as a natural lens, changing shape in order to focus.

You’ll need to wear or carry an external device, which performs the necessary number-crunching, using Bluetooth or similar to transmit instructions to the artificial lens in your eye.

As with many Google projects, we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for this one to hit the market, but you never know …

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Via CNET

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