Bionic contact lens
virtual display that could have a variety of uses from assisting the visually impaired to video gaming
A bionic contact lens is a proposed device that could provide a virtual display that could have a variety of uses from assisting the visually impaired to video gaming, as claimed by the manufacturers and developers. The device will have the form of a conventional contact lens with added bionics technology in the form of a head-up display, with functional electronic circuits and infrared lights to create a virtual display allowing the viewer to see a computer-generated display superimposed on the world outside.
Proposed components
An antenna on the lens could pick up a radio frequency.
In 2016, work on Interscatter from the University of Washington has shown the first Wi-Fi enabled contact lens prototype that can communicate directly with mobile devices such as smartphones at data rates between 2–11 Mbit/s.
Development
Development of the first contact lens display began in the 1990s.
Experimental versions of these devices have been demonstrated, such as one developed by Sandia National Laboratories. The lens is expected to have more electronics and capabilities on the areas where the eye does not see. Radio frequency power transmission and solar cells are expected in future developments. Recent work augmented the contact lens with Wi-Fi connectivity.
In 2011, a functioning prototype with a wireless antenna and a single-pixel display was developed.
The public source identifies “Bionic contact lens” as virtual display that could have a variety of uses from assisting the visually impaired to video gaming. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bionic, contact and lens.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2599856. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bionic contact lens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.