2011

A Seminar Report on
Bionic Contact Lenses
Future Vision to the World

A Partial Fulfillment towards the degree of B.Tech In Electronics & Communication

Rachit Gupta EC III 0834931029

Certificate
This is to certify that seminar report entitled The Bionic Contact Lenses which is submitted by Rachit Gupta in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of degree B. Tech. In department of Electronic and Communication (MAHARANA INSTITUTE OF PROFESSINAL STUDIES), of GAUTAM BUDDHA TECHNICAL UNIVESITY is the record of the candidates own work carried out by him under our supervision. The matter embodied in this thesis is original and has not been submitted in award for any other degree.

Er. Vikas Chawla

(Electronics & Communication Engg.)

Er. Ankit Jain

(Electronics & Instrumentation Engg)

Acknowledgement

It gives us a great sense of pleasure to present the report of the seminar undertaken during the B. Tech. III year. We owe special debt of gratitude to Er. Ankit Jain (Electronics & Instrumentation) for his constant support and guidance throughout the course of our work. His sincerity, thoroughness and perseverance have been a great source of inspiration of us. It is only his cognizant efforts that our endeavours have seen light of the day. We also take opportunity to take the contribution of Mr. Vikas Chawla(Electronics & Communication) for his full support & assistant during the development of project. We also do not like t miss the opportunity to acknowledge the contribution of all faculty members of department for their kind assistance & cooperation during the course of seminar. Last but not the least, we acknowledge our friends for their contribution in the completion of the project.

Arun Singh Deeptika Srivastava Rachit Gupta

Abstract
The power point presentation is prepared to put the future view of the contact lenses with the electronic circuit imprinted over it towards all the faculty members and the students. The phenomenon is though in its initial stage but there are lots of opportunities to grow up and spread worldwide in the near future. Its just the conversion of a science fiction into the reality and its implementation over the real world. It just consists of two things a normal contact lens with an electronic circuit imprinted over it that gives a virtual vision to the world. So get ready for the future vision......

The Age of Interface:

Ever since we humans started building levers, wheels, and other tools, weve needed ways to interface with them that is, to operate and control them. Initially the means of operating our devices were direct and highly intuitive. But as our machines grew in complexity over time, the controls became increasingly complex and more abstracted from the processes they managed. The word interface is defined as a connection between systems, equipment, or people. Its most commonly associated with computing, but it is applicable to practically any humanmachine activity. Interfaces exist to facilitate interaction. As Apple Computer put it, The less alike two entities are, the more obvious the need for the well designed interface becomes.

FROM PUNCHED HOLES TO GESTURES

The evolution of the computer user interface has progressed from punch cards to todays graphic user interface (GUI). Now, were beginning to shift to a new model: the natural user interface (NUI). With punch cards, we had a means of input and output that was far from intuitive and only became productive through hours of training and experience. The GUI was more accessible to the untrained user, its rules more evident and easily acquired through exploration due to

the visual feedback the GUI provided. With the natural user interface, the methods of control will be even more intuitive in that theyre derived from natural actions and behaviours.

SHAPES OF INTERFACES TO COME

Some of the technologies that follow would fit reasonably well under headings of input or output, while others bear elements of both. Still others are essentially amalgams of two or more technologies. One day it might even be possible to combine different elements from different vendors on the fly, much as is done in programming with software toolboxes. y y y y y y y

Touch Screens Flexible Screens 3-d Displays Tangible User Interface Gesture Recognition Sixth Sense Technology Bionic Contact lenses etc.

Introduction
BIONICS

Augmented Reality in a Contact Lens:

People don't think twice about wearing a Bluetooth headset to have conversations on their cell phones. Well, one day it might not be unusual to wear a contact lens that projects the phone's display directly onto the eye. Researchers at the University of Washington have taken an important first step toward building contact lenses that could do just that. By incorporating metal circuitry and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) into a polymer- based lens, they have created a functional circuit that is safe to the eyes. A new generation of contact lenses built with very small circuits and LEDs promises bionic eyesight.

The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse. It can see millions of colors, adjust easily to shifting light conditions, and transmit information to the brain at a rate exceeding that of a high-speed Internet connection.
But why stop there? In the Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzeneggers character sees the world with data superimposed on his visual fieldvirtual captions that enhance the cyborgs scan of a scene. In stories by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, characters rely on electronic contact lenses, rather than smart phones or brain implants, for seamless access to information that appears right before their eyes. It is not often in this era of rampant technological innovation that a fundamentally new concept surfaces. The Bionic Contact lens is a product of it.

The field of bionics concerns the systematic technical implementation of solutions nature has found for particular problems. Today, there are many new, fascinating approaches for developing bionic innovations due to recent dynamic advances in biological research and technology especially at the molecular level. While biotechnology addresses the scientific-technical realm lying between biology and chemistry, bionics closes the gaps separating the fields of biology, physics and engineering. Bionics pursues an interdisciplinary approach to solving application oriented problems. The results of bionic research and development are, however, never reducible to a one to one copy of the models in nature which provided the original inspiration.

Hi ory:
y It was discovered by Babak Parviz y He is an assistant professor in t e university W shingt n. y In 2008 he & his team developed a prototype so called bionic contact lens. y B t sooner it will come into the application due to a rapid advancement in the technology.

Technology of the Contact Lenses

A Bionic contact lens is simply a polymer- based lens incorporated with a metal circuitry and lightemitting diodes (LEDs). It is having the capability to connect to a wireless device and provide a visual image of the data that would normal display on the device into ones field of vision. Ultra thin antennas, a few nanometers thick, are used to send information wirelessly to devices.

Working of an Eye with a contact Lens

Hum n eyes wi Con

Lenses:

A contact l ns (also known simply as a contact) is or therapeutic lens usually a corrective, cosmetic, placed on the cornea of the eye. Leonardo da Vinci is credited with describing and sketching the first ideas for contact lenses in 1508, but it was more than 300 years later before contact lenses were actually fabricated and worn on the eye. Rigid ones were produced and marketed first. Modern soft contact lenses were invented by the C ech chemist tto Wichterle and his assistant Drahoslav Lm, who also invented the first gel used for their production.

LED lightis a reasonable accomplishment. But seeing something useful through the lens is clearly the ultimate goal. Fortunately, the human eye is an extremely sensitive photodetector. At high noon on a cloudless day, lots of light streams through your pupil, and the world appears bright indeed. But the eye doesnt need all that optical powerit can perceive images with only a few microwatts of optical power passing through its lens. An LCD computer screen is similarly wasteful. It sends out a lot of photons, but only a small fraction of them enter your eye and hit the retina to form an image. But when the display is directly over your cornea, every photon generated by the display helps form the image. The beauty of this approach is obvious: With the light coming from a lens on your pupil rather than from an external source, you need much less power to form an image. But how to get light from a lens? Weve considered two basic approaches: y One option is to build into the lens a display based on an array of LED pixels; we call this an active display. y An alternative is to use passive pixels that merely modulate incoming light rather than producing their own.

Basically, they construct an image by changing their colour and transparency in reaction to a light source. (Theyre similar to LCDs, in which tiny liquid-crystal shutters block or transmit white light through a red, green, or blue filter.) For passive pixels on a functional contact lens, the light source would be the environment. The colours wouldnt be as precise as with a whitebacklit LCD, but the images could be quite sharp and finely resolved. By now youre probably wondering how a person wearing one of our contact lenses would be able to focus on an image generated on the surface of the eye. After all, a normal and healthy eye cannot focus on objects that are fewer than 10 centimeters from the corneal surface. The LEDs by themselves merely produce a fuzzy splotch of colour in the wearers field of vision. Somehow the image must be pushed away from the cornea. 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 micro lenses 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 micro lens placed between the eye and the pixels. Spacing a pixel and a micro lens 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 micro lens.

Another way to make sharp images is to use a scanning micro laser or an array of micro lasers. Laser beams diverge much less than LED light does, so they would produce a sharper image. Whether we use LEDs or lasers for our display, the area available for optoelectronics on the surface of the contact is really small: roughly 1.2 millimeters in diameter. The display must also be semitransparent, so that wearers can still see their surroundings. Those are tough but not impossible requirements. The LED chips weve built so far are 300 m in diameter, and the lightemitting zone on each chip is a 60-m-wide ring with a radius of 112 m. Were trying to reduce that by an order of magnitude. Our goal is an array of 3600 10m-wide pixels spaced 10 m apart.

Bionic Lens Like a normal contact lens

If size isnt necessarily a limitation, adequate power could be. Parviz said his group is now working on the issue of how to run displays or biosensors without the need for awkward batteries. So far, the prototypes lensmounted antenna has shown promise in collecting radio frequency waves and turning them into useful energy. If all goes well, putting in or taking out the bionic lens should be as easy as popping a regular one in or out, he said. It should feel like a normal contact lens. It should be completely smooth against the surface of the eye. Which isnt to say the lens is inconspicuous. If you look into the rabbits eyes, you would notice that something is going on, Parviz said. Nevertheless, the rabbits tolerated the bionic lenses well during their 20-minute fittings, though none of the systems have yet been switched on. The group has yet to seek permission for the necessary safety trials in humans.

Construction
.

How to build a Bionic contact lens?

The final challenge is making them all fit on the same tiny polymer disc. Recall the pieces that we need to cram onto a lens: metal microstructures to form antennas; compound semiconductors to make optoelectronic devices; advanced complementary metaloxide-semiconductor silicon circuits for low-power control and RF telecommunication; micro electromechanical system (MEMS) transducers and resonators to tune the frequencies of the RF communication; and surface sensors that are reactive with the biochemical environment. The semiconductor fabrication processes wed typically use to make most of these components wont work because they are both thermally and chemically incompatible with the flexible polymer substrate of the contact lens. To get around this problem, we independently fabricate most of the micro components on silicon-on-insulator wafers, and we fabricate the LEDs and some of the biosensors on other substrates. Each part has metal interconnects and is etched into a unique shape. The end yield is a collection of powderfine parts that we then embed in the lens.

We start by preparing the substrate that will hold the micro components, a 100-m-thick slice of polyethylene terephthalate. The substrate has photo lithographically defined metal interconnect lines and binding sites. These binding sites are tiny wells, about 10 m deep, where electrical connections will be made between components and the template. At the bottom of each well is a minuscule pool of a low-melting-point alloy that will later join together two interconnects in what amounts to micrometer-scale soldering. We then submerge the plastic lens substrate in a liquid medium and flow the collection of micro components over it. The binding sites are cut to match the geometries of the individual parts so that a triangular component finds a triangular well, a circular part falls into a circular well, and so on. When a piece falls into its complementary well, a small metal pad on the surface of the component comes in contact with the alloy at the bottom of the well, causing a capillary force that lodges the component in place. After all the parts have found their slots, we drop the temperature to solidify the alloy. This step locks in the mechanical and electrical contact between the components, the inter connects, and the substrate. The next step is to ensure that all the potentially harmful components that weve just assembled are

completely safe and comfortable to wear. The lenses weve been developing resemble existing gaspermeable contacts with small patches of a slightly less breathable material that wraps around the electronic components. Weve been encapsulating the functional parts with poly (methyl methacrylate), the polymer used to make earlier generations of contact lenses. Then theres the question of the interaction of heat and light with the eye. Not only must the systems power consumption be very low for the sake of the energy budget, it must also avoid generating enough heat to damage the eye, so the temperature must remain below 45 C. We have yet to investigate this concern fully, but our preliminary analyses suggest that heat shouldnt be a big problem.

Testing on a live eye

All the basic technologies needed to build functional contact lenses are in place. Scientists have tested our first few prototypes on animals, proving that the platform can be safe. The lenses have been tested on rabbits, however testing on humans has not yet been approved. The researchers placed the lens in a rabbit's eye for 20minutes and found no adverse effects. What they need to do now is show all the subsystems working together, shrink some of the components even more, and extend the RF power harvesting to higher efficiencies and to distances greater than the few centimeters we have now. They also need to build a companion device that would do all the necessary computing or image processing to truly prove that the system can form images on demand. Scientists are starting with a simple product, a contact lens with a single light source, and they aim to work up to more sophisticated lenses that can superimpose computergenerated high-resolution colour graphics on a users real field of vision.

Working: How to get light from a lens? Weve considered two basic approaches: y One option is to build into the lens a display based on an array of LED pixels; we call this an active display. y An alternative is to use passive pixels that merely modulate incoming light rather than producing their own. Though the second one sound more attractive and easy but we prefer the Active display techniques rather than the second one in general. Another way to make sharp images is to use a scanning micro laser or an array of micro lasers. Laser beams diverge much less than LED light does, so they would produce a sharper image.

The Applications:
According to the researchers, from the University of Washington, some of the possible applications include the following: *zooming in on distant objects *get useful facts to pop up in your field of view *create virtual cross-hairs *holographic driving control panels *surfing the Web *visual aids for vision-impaired people *immersive video games The team suggests that the "Bionic Eye" lenses could have a much greater potential of uses. How about a personalized wide-screen TV?

Hurdles:
(a) First challenge was designing the surface of the lens so the electronics didn't block regular vision. (b) The more pressing problem was how to attach the electronic componentseach thinner than a human hairto the delicate polymer of a contact lens. (c) Building the lenses was a challenge because materials that are safe for use in the body, such as the flexible organic materials used in contact lenses, are delicate. (d) Display circuitry couldn't be made small and light enough to be placed on a contact lens without a noticeable increase in the lens's weight. (e) Micro fabrication Techniq e: Direct placement would probably damage the lens and be too time consuming. So researchers built a separate, nano-size metal component and mixed them together so that they appeared like a fine powder. This powder was then placed in a vial of fluid and poured over a pitted lens surface. Each pit corresponded to a particular component, so as the mixture washed over the lens, the components found their positions.

A molecular adhesive force known as capillary actionthe same property that allows plants to "suck up" waterlocked the pieces into place. The lenses were then put into the eyes of lab rabbits, which showed no signs of adverse effects after at least 20minutes of wear. (f) Another big obstacle was resolving the fundamental Incompatibility between the fabrication process for microchips and light-emitting diodes and the types of polymers used for contact lenses. (g)Focusing on image qualit : Some scientists have been less gung ho. Daniel Palanker, a retinal implant expert at Stanford University, questioned the ability of a display generated by the contact lens to produce a sharp image on the retina of its wearers eye, noting that the normal focal distance for seeing objects clearly is about 25centimeters in front of a persons eye. But Glenn Chapman, a professor in the School of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, said researchers could overcome that obstacle by precisely adjusting the angle of incoming light emitted by diodes on the contact lens. Assuming the light beam is high-quality, correcting the beam's incoming angle could make up for the cornea's lack of focusing ability and instead allow the transparent crystalline lens behind the eye's iris to focus the image onto the wearer's retina. Of course, contact-wearing

rabbits won't be able to tell researchers when they've hit upon the right angle to produce a crisp image, Chapman said, but an artificial eye overlaid with the lens could do the trick. Researchers are trying to pair micro lenses to each pixel in a display created by the contact lens, hopefully manipulating the image and changing its perceived location in such a way that the viewer would have the feeling of seeing an in-focus picture suspended in midair. But he agreed that the challenge will be a complicated one. (h)How to gi e power suppl : If size isnt necessarily a limitation, adequate power could be. Hence researchers are working on the issue of how to run displays or biosensors without the need for awkward batteries. So far, the prototypes lens-mounted antenna has shown promise in collecting radiofrequency waves and turning them into useful energy.

Proposed Work by Elliot Whaley

His proposal involves the use of photoelectric cells implanted in the contact lens developed at the University of Washington, to take power from solar energy and an antenna to allow the contacts to function anywhere. An important feature of these contact lenses is that they are wireless and easy to use anytime, anywhere. It does not need to be physically connected to anything to work. In order to keep this device stand alone, it needs a way to power itself without an accessory that would need to be carried around to charge it. Taking solar energy to power these lenses solves this problem. The lenses would need to have photoelectric cells, which convert solar energy to electrical energy. Just one square meter of a solar panel has the ability to power a100W light bulb. A solar panel will need to be scaled down to fit inside the contacts lenses with material that is compatible with the eye. Some advantages of using solar energy are that solar energy is free, needs no fuel and produces no waste or pollution. Some disadvantages are its high co stand a decrease in its performance at night. However, in cases in which solar energy is no longer available, the contact lenses are capable of extracting minimal power from the antenna, which could compensate for no light The antenna does this by collecting radio frequency waves

and turning them into useful energy. The drawback of this method is that the user might be in a place with no frequencies to pick up, like the Amazon. So a system that would combine the methods of solar energy and the antenna could potentially be powered a tall times. With the proper research and development team this proposal can be done and will help advance the device already in progress at University of Washington.

Future Applications
1) Soldiers could use the technology to see information about their environment, collected from sensors. 2) People could use the electronic lens as a cell-phone display, to see who is calling and to watch videos 3) The bionic lens could prove a huge boon for mobile-device manufacturers. 4)A biosensor-equipped lens could provide anoninvasive way of that information and sending it on to a database or serving as a relay station for data or power from retinal implants designed to correct vision problems. 5) The lens as a sensor that could monitor chemical levels in the body and notify the user if they indicate signs of disease. 6) Future applications might allow drivers and pilots to see their direction and speed projected across their view. 7) Wireless communication to and from the lens will be possible. 8) Video-game companies could use the contact lenses to completely immerse players in a virtual world without restricting their range of motion. 9) May be the technique could even create sight aids for visually impaired people.

Conclusion:
The true promise of this research is not just the actual system the scientists end up making, whether its a display, a biosensor, or both. We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the i-Phone is today, with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions. As far as were concerned, the possibilities extend as far as the eye can see, and beyond. If safety and engineering issues are addressed, future iterations could perhaps be engineered to camouflage the circuitry, thus sparing bionic lens-wearing commuters the stares of passersby swearing theyd just seen the Terminator or a visor-less Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Bibliography:
Sites Visited:
 Wikipedia.com  Science Central Archive  www.scribd.com/doc/.../Final-THE-BIONICCONTACT-LENS-doc  http://inventorspot.com/articles/get_superhuman_vi sion_bionic_eye_10014  Discovery.com  Youtube.com  Spectrum.ieee.org

Research Papers:
 Physorg.com  University of Washington  The Futurist