Researchers at Second Sight, the company that created the Argus II, have altered the device for use in a novel and potentially significant way. As they report in an article published this week in Frontiers in Neuroprosthetics, they’ve connected the implant to a computer that produces digital braille patterns, allowing them to directly stream braille onto a blind patient’s retina.
The continued development and miniaturization of optical and computer technology has allowed engineers to create devices like the Argus II: a retinal prosthesis that uses a small camera, a computer and a series of electrodes surgically implanted on a blind person’s retina to convert the world around them into electronic impulses that enter the brain.
This kind of application of a retinal implant could revolutionize reading for the blind and visually impaired. Just as traditional tactile braille opened up an entire world of written text to blind people in the early 1900s, storing books as digital braille for retinal implants could do the same for text in the 21st century.
As the technology is improved and refined, it could become cheaper and give everyday access to visual text and so much more to those without vision. Retina and bionic eye implants will aide those with disabilities when it comes to eye sight but hese kinds of technologies are always accepted by the general public as a “benefit”. When you realize this you’ll “see” that we are edging closer to a bionic society and it doesn’t begin or end with eyesight, just think about it…
No comments:
Post a Comment