[2] Today, a handful of soldiers with advanced gear can see a few digital maps, through helmet-mounted monocles [3]. Some pilots can get data about their world, on heads-up displays [4]. But one day, troops could see an info-"augmented" reality all around them, with contact lenses that provide "first-person shooter-type video game" environments to those that wear them [5]. At least, that's the idea behind the latest project from DARPA, the Pentagon's blue sky science and technology division.
The agency's Information Processing Techniques Office [6] announced Wednesday that it's looking for information on "the creation of micro- and nano-scale display technologies for the purpose of creating displays that could be worn as transparent contact lenses." And not in some far-off future. But in "three to five years."
A limiting factor to untethered, augmented and/or mixed reality applications is the bulkiness, power consumption, cost, limited resolution and limited field of view of head-mounted displays. DARPA seeks to leap beyond incremental, evolutionary enhancement of head-mounted display technologies to a see-through contact lens on which images can be displayed. This information might be command-and-control information, not unlike information provided to players of first-person, shooter-type videogames or synthetic entities and effects in a live training environment.
But all kinds of questions remain -- from manufacturing to power to wireless data transfer. Even basics, like which display technologies would be used, remain. Maybe lasers, DARPA suggests. Maybe light-emitting diodes. Or maybe something else entirely will give troops this videogame vision.
The materials behind real-life invisibility cloaks [7] could even factor in, sorta. DARPA is talking about spending $3 million next year on "transparent displays [8]" -- and you'd certainly want your Halo 3-esque contacts to be transparent. The key to those displays [9] would be "metamaterials," the strange substances that can bend certain frequencies of light around them.
[10]UPDATE: As Jimmy points out in the comments, University of Washington researchers [11] are already working on a similar gadget -- a contact lens assembled with functional circuitry and LEDs [12]. Pop Mech reports:
Potential uses include virtual displays for pilots, videogame projections and telescopic vision for soldiers. A working prototype of a lens-embedded antenna that draws power for the device from radio frequencies has also been created. The next steps are to build a version that can display several pixels -- and then to test it on a person.
The UW team uses a technique called self-assembly to manufacture the eyewear. Researchers dust a specially designed contact lens with microscale components that automatically bond to predetermined receptor sites. The shape of each component dictates where it attaches.
(High five: JSG)