Futurama’s EyePhone is Becoming a Reality [Science]

One of my favorite Futurama episodes was about Fry getting an EyePhone (get it?) that allowed him to walk around watching the Internet on a screen projected into the air in front of him. Surprisingly enough, this technology could really happen. Sort of. Instead of being hilariously and painfully jammed into our eye sockets, we can just slip on a pair of contact lenses with LEDs printed onto their surface.

Scientists at the University of Washington are working on embedding miniaturized blue, green, and red lights onto the surface of contact lenses. Once that happens, they’ll be able to connect the lenses to another video source like a computer or mobile phone, and you’ll be able to look through the lenses instead of the screen. This will allow you to watch video anywhere. Imagine being able to watch TV or movies while you’re at a business meeting. Or overlay an augmented reality template that makes everything look like the bridge of the starship Enterprise or Pandora from Avatar. Reality, your services are no longer required.

Unfortunately, the buzzkills at Reddit were pretty quick to point out the major flaw in this technology, even if they got it to work:

“The problem with a contact lens video screen is that the minimum focal length of our vision is one to two inches away from the eye. This means that anything placed directly onto the eye will be blurry and out of focus. Theoretically, one could create a contact lens screen if each pixel was aimed at the corresponding spot at the back of the eye, also accounting for refraction, but no such technology exists. Maybe someday, but no time soon.” – tjuicet

I don’t know enough about vision to argue with them, but at the same time I find it hard to believe all these scientists are working on projects that absolutely will never work.So I’m pre-ordering my EyePhone right now, just in case.

Would you wear an EyePhone if it was available? What other awesome stuff could you do with a screen on your eye? The comments section is lonely…

[Spotted via Reddit]

[Image Source: You Are Here]