Making Contact (Lenses) With the future

that everybody. Everybody has a favorite stack, right. Uh. So we're actually gonna be talking about contact lenses specifically here because there's been a little bit of information in the news about some high tech contact lenses. We kind of wanted to explore that and talk about some of the different approaches to contact lenses of the future. And um, we've got a couple of different, uh perspectives on this.

I guess that's sort of a pun, one of them being under Google's version and then some other versions as well. And uh, it ties into some other things that we've talked about in past episodes. Oh yeah, we talked all the time on the show about wearable health monitors. And also about augmented reality and contact lenses could potentially provide new new intros into both of those. Yeah, so it's really uh, I mean potentially it could be incredible technology

for large populations. Yeah. I mean if you thought people were obsessed with their phones, wait till they don't even have to hold it in their hands. You say that, but I remember everyone giving me funny looks when I was sporting the Google Glass. But that's because you were sporting the Google Glass. It was a big thing that people could see your face. I was rocking the Google glass. Okay, okay, you were. You were rocking it extremely hard and you

look so cool. Everybody was like, who is that? Man? Makes me said that I had to give those back. Uh. So let's talk about Google's approach to contact lenses, because it is different from their approach to Google Glass. Well. Yeah, and one of the big differences that is that Google Glass. You might say it was essentially an augmented reality. Uh, I don't know. Would you say augmented really? Yeah, I'd say I'd say it was a very early implementation of

some augmented reality is really more like a second screen. Yeah, put a screen in my eyeball. Yeah, but here my eyeball is the case. Maybe, but I think you could see what they were going for. It was it was trending toward augmented reality, yes, definitely. So the principle of

augmented reality is different than virtual reality. Just for those of you who don't know, augmented reality is that you're basically perceiving reality as it is, but with some things added or modified, some sort of over lay on top of it. Now, with Google's contact lenses, at least in the the short term, the near term, they don't have anything to do with augmented reality at all. Uh. Instead, it just happens to be a thing that goes on your eyeballs, yes, yeah, and it happens to be provided

by Google. So, but this was something that was publicly announced on January six, two thousand and fourteen. There had been some rumors that Google was working on something that had to do with contact lenses before this announcement, but it was made public on their blog. Google employees Brian Otis and Babak Parvis jointly published a blog post. They were the or still are I assume the co project

leaders on this, uh, and they worked in Google's X division. Now, the Google X division is no longer a division within Google. It's actually they're not, well, no, there's still they're still associated with Google. It's just that now you have a new parent company called Alphabet. Google is one of the subsidiaries. Under Alphabet, Google X is a second subsidiary. The idea being that now Google X can continue to do research and development but not have to answer to the other

company of Google in order to do so. Like if if Big Google does poorly, it doesn't affect Google X. In other words, so, but so if they're working on futuristic contact lenses and they're not expressly or primarily for augmented reality, you know, not for making people's tender profiles pop up when you look at their faces, what exactly

are they for? Something that's really cool? And it goes back to what Lauren was saying with the sort of the health monitoring systems that we've been looking at in the past, in fact has a lot to do with that.

The contact lenses incorporate sensors and circuitry and microprocessors in order to monitor something about either the person who's wearing it or the environment that person is in, and then send that information to an actual device that would do the processing part, like the real data crunching part, that would then display information either to that person or to someone else that uh like an expert, like for example,

with health it might be to that person's doctor. Uh. The idea being that it could create a very early warning system in a lot of cases, um and really monitor at a uh precise level a person's health from moment to moment, give real time updates. It's a really

cool idea. UM. Now, the main purpose they talked about in that blog post was to help people who suffer from diabetes, because obviously, diabetes it's a it's a huge problem, particularly here in the United States, and it's a problem that can lead to very serious health complicate ations down

the line if you aren't treating it properly. Sure, and it can, especially in people with type one diabetes, lead to extremely serious consequences moment to moment when their blood sugar spikes or drops exactly right, So you want to be able to monitor your glucose levels, and and normally the way you would do that is you'd have to take a blood sample and it's pretty obtrusive. Yeah, all right, And they said, you know this, this is it's something

that plagues people who suffer from diabetes. It can become a disincentive to keep up with your glucose levels, which could lead to disastrous results. So what they wanted to do was develop a sensor that could detect glucose levels in your tears as opposed to your blood stream. Sure and uh, and that's not just when people with diabetes are like listening to a lot of Morrissey, you always

have tears in your eyes. They're called basal tears. It's and and those are a substance that that have glucose and a representative amount of your blood glucose level in them at all times. Right. And one of the criticisms that I've heard directed at this approach is that the level of glucost present in your tears is different from

that that is present in your blood. So there's some some people who question how accurate this contact lens can be, Like, how how much does your glucose level have to change? How dramatic must have changed me before the sensor picks it up. That's obviously something that will be worked out if and when this moves on to a testing phase. With the f d A and we'll talk about that in a second as well. But beyond UH checking your glucost levels, it can do other things, um, but I'll

talk about that in a seconds. Google, in order to do this as partnered with another company called Novartis UH, and they gave a very conservative prediction that the contact lenses would be available sometime around the year two thousand nineteen. Now you say that's conservative, what why do you think it might be sooner than that. I think I think

the technology will be ready before that. And that's based upon just the fact that not too long ago Google had an internal UH document talking about what would be interesting ways to package these contact lenses. If you're thinking about packaging, you're probably getting to a point where the technology itself is pretty close to being ready. Yeah, But then again, you could think about that era of Hollywood where they had a poster before they had a script

for a movie. You know what, you are entirely correct that is that is absolutely a possibility. And whether the technology is ready or not. As we've talked about on the show before, it's really a quite laborious process getting something approved for medical use in a human population, and

and we are thankful for that laborious process. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no, yaya laborious because it means that you are more likely to have something that has real efficacy as opposed to a placebo or something that you know is telling you, yes, I'm going to alert you in the case of a medical emergency, and if it doesn't work, then real people

suffer because of that. I wonder if it would be easier for them to get it on the market faster if they just they marketed it as an extremely crappy augmented reality device that just happens to have a bug that measures your glucose welly. And we've seen cases of of where a drug that was intended for one use ends up being finding incredible success marketed for another use. But I I suspect that wouldn't happen. Although they could say, hey,

these are contact lenses that are like a thermometer. I can tell you your body temperature and if you are having a fever or if your body temperature drops. Because that's something else they could do. They could incorporate a sensor that's a very basic thermometer. It's actually a circuitry component that changes shape with the temperature. You know, it'll expand or contract depending on the temperature particular levels, basically like like at a at a certain um at certain temperatures,

that will basically phase change kind of. It's it's a it's a resistor inside the inside the circuit. So when the resistor expands, its resistance changes, and by measuring the change in resistance you can determine what the butture is, which is really clever, so you could market it as this is a very interesting thermometer that you wear on your eye. Also, they'll tell you if it'll tell you if your glucoast level drops. Uh, but I mean you

get it. All depends on what kind of sensors are incorporated. They don't go so far as to say all of this is going to be in a single pair of contact lenses. It may very well be that these are specific types of contact lenses, some of which may never come to market. Yeah. Now, this is a very impressive and daunting engineering project to get something as tiny as a contact lens to do, to do something like this and to stand alone right right because because you don't

want to hook up a coax cable to your eyeball. Yeah, you don't want to have to have a or or a in a power extension cord going to your eyes plug my eyes. Yeah, I actually kind of want that, but that might just be the cyberpunkin. Yeah, that's that's more of a shadow run kind of thing, you know, when we're rolling our dark elves who need to go

and what is hacking called that game? I forget anyway? So, uh, at any rate, the the the way that this works, well, first people were guessing that was going to run off r f I D, that was gonna run off radio frequency. Actually not not r F I D in general, but radio frequencies in particular. You would put in an r F I D antenna as part of the circuitry. Here's the interesting thing about radio frequencies. You can actually harvest electricity using an antenna, you know, to pick up radio waves.

This is abundantly clear. If you ever pick up a very basic radio kit which tends to have a crystal and and some wire that acts as in antenna, and then you hook up another into a speaker's or headphones. You don't need a battery. You can actually put the headphones on and here radio transmissions. Assuming that one your antenna is long enough and to that you're close enough to the transmission source. And uh, that's why. You know, while you can harvest electricity in this way, it's not

the way we distribute electricity. It's not the way we we Uh, you know, I have a power grid set up on this because it's incredibly inefficient. Like if you wanted to broadcast electricity, you would have to have incredibly powerful radio broadcasts. You need to be close to that broadcast source, and everyone would have to have these enormous antennas to pick up radio waves. Yeah, and it would

be decreasingly effective the more walls you were behind. Picturing us needing to have a transmitter like in this podcast room, just like well nine by nine podcast room. I mean, it's like filling up a drinking glass with a lawn sprinkler, right, And it's it's it's not just that it's inefficient in that matter, it's it's also that you're you're just losing so much power, you know, you're it's you're not conserving energy at all. It's it makes no sense to go

that way. But for something as small as a contact lens, if your device that you're using to communicate back and forth between the contact lens. UH is able to emit radio frequencies. It could presumably be a method to power this stuff, and in fact, that's what everyone thought it was going to do back in the day. If you go at least at the time of the recording of this, if you go to the Wikipedia page for this, it's still held Wikipedia believes. I say that as if Wikipedia

is a sentient entity. It's still Wikipedia. I fear you. It's still the way that the Wikipedia entry says, Uh, the contact lenses will get power. However, according to a patent that was filed back in July, that's not the case. The patent. One of the inventors cited in the pattern was Bob Otis, the the co project leader UM and they instead looked at using let me guess, radio isotope thermoelectric generator. No, No, excellent guess, however, h onboard fusion reactor,

a flux capacitor. No, it was none of the things. It was instead of light, just pure light. So the idea of being that you would have a photo receptor that could convert light into electricity, very like a solar panel in your eyes sort of. Although it doesn't necessarily have to be light from the sun. It could be, but it doesn't necessarily have to be and UH. The idea being that the little photo receptor would not just bring in light to generate power, but also would feed

that data to the microprocessor. And if the light coming into your eyes is modulated so that it can hold data like those smart light bulbs that we talked about a couple of months ago. Yeah, or like um, really, if you think about it's like a very advanced version of a Morse code lamp that by flashing the lamp on and off, you're sending a coded signal. Just make that way faster. In the signals are just a series of zeros and once so so fast that you cannot,

in fact tell the difference from your brain. Right, and it might even be at a frequency that you can't see. Right. It could be infrared light, so you wouldn't even see it in that case. UM. And in this way, your your contact lenses will be able to communicate to another UH system. So we mentioned the idea of using these

contact lenses to monitor your glucose levels. What would happen is that your contact lenses would be getting data from your tears about how much glucose is in your your system and send that information to the microprocessor, which would then send a command to some sort of emitter. It would either be something as small as a very tiny LED light. In other words, your eyes will be shooting light out of them, not necessarily like you can see. Again,

it could be infrared. What you're saying is that this isn't going to turn everyone into cyclops. No, only a few fortunate people. We'll get the kind where you can see like red light coming out of their eyes. I mean, I can imagine that happening. Is that what the X and Google X stands after all this time? X men, it's the X factor. I'm not gonna say one way or the other. Um. All I can say is that I know a guy who works for Google, and he gets real quiet when I ask him these questions. But

he also finds me intensely irritating. So the But the the other way that it could work as as opposed to having an LED light, it could have a reflector inside the contact lenses, and this would be like holding up a mirror to signal someone by reflecting sunlight toward them. Again, kind of like in Morse code, but much faster, another modulated lights source, so that you could send data back

and forth. They even go so far as to say that if you wanted to get really fancy with this, you could have photo receptors that are capable of picking up different colors of light, and each color of light could represent a different data stream. Yeah, think about that, Like, you could end up having the ability to accept multiple levels of information through your eyes. I mean, we do that way, but I mean the contact lenses could. But all of this would just be so that your contact

lenses could send that data back to another device. Because, as we've already mentioned this, this particular implementation that's described in the patent doesn't have any kind of display built into the contact lens, so you wouldn't see, like, it wouldn't come up with a warning in your vision saying, hey,

your glucose levels are too high or too low. Instead, it would send that information to some other companion device, which would then either alert you or a caregiver or whatever, like basically like send a text yeah and be like hey, yeah,

Jonathan needs a cookie or whatever it may be. So, no, you don't have direct communication from the contact lens itself, but it is monitoring your your activity or um not so much your activity, but you're just whatever the sensor is designed to do, whether it's BOI, yeah, and what are okay? So we talked about temperature, we talked about glucose levels, what other things could it be looking for other other sort of chemicals that are in your body,

that are present in your tears. Technically, any sensor that could detect those could be incorporated into these, uh these contact lenses as long as they could be miniaturized to that degree. So but beyond that we're talking we I mentioned that these could also detect things that are in your environment, not just the stuff that's inside your body,

but the stuff you come in contact with. So you could have sensors that pick up on things like hazardous materials that let's say that's a dangerous gas that you would otherwise be unable to detect on your own, or about like warning there are bees in your eyes that probably probably they're not going to go that far. I'm going to get. Now, allergens they do look for, but that's different than bees. When you're allergic to bees, it's not it's not the well, we'll have a to pres Yeah,

it's not. It's not like you're all Nicolas caging and and I'm aware of Yeah, no, it's but when I wonder if like bed ender is a thing, well, I mean if be dander's essentially pollen, so oh actually yeah, yeah. In that case, it would be like, Joe, there's bees in your eyes again. Well, I guess it would be Siri telling you, right, we need to Not Siri, it would be Google. Yeah, yeah, we need to have a talk about your your your life and your choices and

be like go take a zero tech. Yeah, this is soundingly like a terrible Sandman comic to me right now. And honestly, it's just bees in the eyes. Well they can. They could have sensors for allergens. So let's say that you are really allergic to certain types of pollen. You could have sensors that are incorporated into your contact lenses that could alert you if you were coming into an area that has a lot of it, which could tell you to one either get away or maybe you need

to pop an anti histamine so that you don't move out. Yeah. Yeah. In Atlanta would just say just don't even bother going outside. Just stay inside from the months of like March through July. Um, then it could. But again, other hazards of stuff like say carbon monoxide, you could have sensors that pick up on that and alert you to that presence. Beyond that,

you could have lots of other stuff. You can have, you know, the temperature, the heat sensor, letting you know if someone is having like a fever spike or their body temperature drops. Uh Suddenly, that's a really useful ability. But there are some other ones that are a little less medical in nature and possibly more commercial and or troubling. Like Google has said that one of the things this could do is be a way of um authenticating someone's

identity or ascertaining that identity. So maybe not just authentication, but identifying a person. Uh so so sort of like a sort of like a smart chip in a credit card. Yeah, but it's just in your eyeball, I guess. I assume it would also be based on your body chemistry. That would uh, you know, alert people that yes, this is in fact that person. It seems a little seems a little or welly into me. Not on aste. I say that blood alcohol content is zero point eight, must be Jonathan, Yeah,

that's me. I'm the one I drink so much I'm dead. Actually if I well, oddly enough, I think I'm meant to say point zero. You know, pointy was like insane. It's like point I'm on alcohol. Uh, I'm fun at parties. So at any rate, the yeah, it's a little troubling. But the patent doesn't go into great detail about how it would actually do this. I don't know if any of you guys out there have read patents. I know that my my coworkers here have read through patents before.

Pattens are meant to give you an overview of how a certain technology uh is supposed to work, and in return, you get protection for your approach to that technology for a certain amount of time. But but the information is publicly there are also can sort of practical and commercial

concerns at play in the creation of patent. Yeah, it behooves you to not say too much, because as soon as you say something, it can I mean like like, for example, I think that the makers of w D forty have never patented their their recipe basically because they don't want anyone else to copy here. Right, So, if you're able to keep your your trade secret secret, it might be better not to patent it. But even if

you do patent it, there's nothing about. You can be a little vague with your language, which sometimes means that you're like, Okay, I see what it's supposed to do, but I still don't see exactly how it does that thing. Another example of that is this idea of pairing the the contact lenses with other outside products. They specifically talked about.

They use the term merchandise item. So I was just imagining going through a store and looking at stuff on a shelf, and uh, it's somehow is able to the contact lens is able to recognize a product some way. Maybe it's the way the lights reflecting off the product. Maybe the packaging has another little r f I D transmitter thing and it or something that's it could be an r F I D antenna instead of a light sensor. In that case, well wait, what could couldn't this um, well,

I don't know, maybe not. I mean, depending on what the capabilities of it are. Couldn't it also just respond to a visual code like a bar code or like a QR code. Yeah, except that, what do you build into the contact lens that can see the code? Right? I mean unless it's unless you're scanning something so that the code changes from dark to light to dark to light to dark to light. For your photo receptor, you'd have to have some sort of camera like device incorporated

into the contact lens. That it was complicated. I would guess the future trending pathway of this kind of technology would be towards some kind of photosensitive camera type technology in it, right, I suppose. So, I just don't know of one that's miniaturized to that degree. Certainly not but but but at any rate, So, so you're so you're looking at a merchandise item, Um, what why would they

care about? They compare it with things like coupons, so that Google makes money with these contact lenses by essentially selling ads, except you're not getting hit by advertisements so much as you're getting the opportunity. And I use that with air quotes to use electronic coupons for various products you come in contact with. Again, they don't go into detail about how this would actually be, how this would be incorporated, but they mentioned the possibility of it, uh,

which I understand. I understand. I'm not a fan of that idea at all. I don't like the idea. Man, I think it's beautiful and it's and it's discordian. Uh just absolute future. Hell, that's wonderful. It's been a few years since I've had to put contact lenses in because I got lazy eye surgery, so I don't need contact

lenses anymore. I just think back to when I was first putting them in and how much of a trial it was to try and get contact lenses on my eyes, and I think, would I go through that trouble for advertising? Like like that to me is like, well, that's I don't know that. Yeah, I don't know the coupons matter that much to me. I mean, would we go with a subsidized kindle type? Yeah? Yeah, That's exactly what I'm thinking,

is that if you, if you're smart, contacts are cheaper. Yea, yeah, you get the discount contacts if if it allows you to you know, if you're if you're browsing through the supermarket and you and you look at a certain brand of crackers for for long enough, you get a text It's like, hey, I see that you're interested in these chicken crackers. Chicken crackers, and I'll finally be able to afford rits. Yeah, chicken crackers, chicken chicken chicken biscuits. Yeah,

you've never seen chicken crackers. What are you talking about? Chicken chicken flavored crackers. Yeah, these things, these are things that exist. I have eaten them. For the record, podcast listeners, shoe is horrified right now, more perplexed. Made with real chicken feathers. They also make shrimpy chips. It's more of a it's more of an Asian thing. But yeah, they're they're like Korean little like like shrimpy cracker puffs. They they do taste vaguely ocean like. I'm a big fan

of them. I have a I can't buy them because eat a lot of them. Would it be ethical to design a contact lens that causes piercing, stabbing pain in the eyeballs if you don't buy what it recommends? I think you've answered your question already, because whenever you have the question would it be ethical too? And it's followed by the phrase stabbing pain, the answer is pretty much always going to be no, unless it's prevents stabbing pain, in which case the answer is probably yes. Uh. Well.

One of the other things I want to mention is that almost all of the the coverage I see for these contact lenses brings up the possibility that maybe one day it will incorporate some sort of display technology, so you would get that that augmented overlay in your vision.

I mean, that's the obvious thing when you say when you say Google is working on smart contact lenses, everybody immediately assumes what they're talking about is some kind of augmented reality thing, right, And the patent does not go into any detail on that side at all. Uh. That doesn't mean that Google is not thinking about it. It doesn't mean that they aren't working on the technology. It's

just not described within that particular patent. Uh. It also, to me, would suggest that they would have to look into some other form of generating power for the contact lenses beyond harvesting light energy. I don't think light energy would be I don't think there's any way you could build photo receptors that are efficient enough to convert enough of the light into energy electricity to power any kind of display, even keeping in mind it's a very small

display because it's right over your eyes. I don't know that you could do that just with light alone. You might need some other power source. Maybe r if I D or maybe something else plug your eyes in. But we've got we've got other discussions about contact lenses that are more in that augmented reality realm as well. Yeah. Yeah.

A study that was published in January in the American Chemical Society's journal Applied Materials and Interfaces describes a proof of concept material that could be used to coat contact lenses, potentially turning them into wearable screens. Awesome. So this wasn't so much about the contact lenses themselves, but rather a different material that you would have to find some way to bind to a contact lens exactly. Yeah. The stuff is highly conductive and also hydrophilic, which in practice means

that it won't electrocute you. Yeah, and in biomedical terms, avoiding electrocution is what is considered a good thing, especially with the eyeballs. Yeah, it's it's it's it's basically a

clear film um that's a potential circuit. So so the study, the study is called Hydrophilic Organic electrodes on flexible hydro Gel's if you happen to want to check it out, and the research was led by the University of South Australia's Future Industries institute, which is a thing that exists which is really exciting to me, in collaboration with other materials tech researchers from around the world and also a

UK contact materials manufacturer called Contumac Limited. I love the idea of a future industries institute, like you could just come up with any industry that doesn't exist right now and say one day at well, it's going to be a future industry. My virtual reality dog grooming. It's so so is this stuff on the market right now or despite the fact that they were working with a contact materials manufacturer, No, not at all. It's it's totally not

ready for the proverbial prime time. Yet they've they've they've created this stuff and they've proven that it could be used to coat the type of hydrogel polymer that is commonly used for for contact less Yes, the next step is creating a technique that will get it too stick to contacts. Also important. Um you know, then make sure that it lasts and appreciably long time despite the rigors of being in constant contact with fluids, which is what

makes nearly everything in the universe breakdown. Uh. Then work on manufacturing processes that will make it mass producible and simultaneously developed compatible technologies to power the material and allow it to be used to monitor biosigns as in the Google context, or to create a kind of display that you can look at with your ays. Well, it's cool that they're looking at this material science approach. I think

that's really neat. I mean it's very different from the approach that Google is doing, where they're looking at incorporating circuitry, uh, kind of around the pupil of the eye, right, so you know you don't see it because it's it's around the part works. Yeah, but this is a slightly different approach where it could be incorporated direct, especially if you can create transparent circuitry. Uh, it's all overlaid on top of your eye, but you you just see right through

it unless they activated as a display. So we talked about that that those looking into different ways of powering it. You came up you saw something that was really cool that you know, it's not relying on light, it's not relying on on radio frequencies, it's relying on something else. Yeah.

This this comes from one of the lead researchers of of of the study that I was looking at and he mentioned in an interview I believe with Mashable something like that that this could be combined with technology that allows us to power electronics through human tears. So again, since we've already established that there are always tears in the eyes, I was going to make a joke about seeing sad movies and then you can finally power your electronics.

But obviously that that ship sailed a long time ago. This is really an interesting idea because you've got your renewable resource right there as the user, and it's tears, and it's tears, but it's it's the tears that are always in your eyes. It's now that you're just like you have to carry a picture of a little, a little sad kitty cat and look at that, and you're like, all right, now I can use my admitted reality contact lenses again. Time to recharge. You gotta watch the end

of Homeward Bound. Hanging in there, kitty, just keep hanging in there. Just let me put on bou on rug for a minute. I really need to send a text that definitely makes me cry, but not for the reasons you're talking about. Okay, that's an argument for another day. Uh No, no, so, so researchers are pursuing en somatic biofuel cells a k a. E f c s and

these work basically like other fuel cells. We we discussed a whole bunch of fuel cell technology in an episode back in January called our fuel Cells the Future, UM, and that was a long time ago. Maybe we should do an update episode on that and and you guys, if you have not listened to it, you can go back and and for for a full take on how that technology works. But but very basically, UM, how fuel cell. How fuel cells work is that you get two substances

together to create an oxidation reaction, thus freeing electrons. Right, if you can figure out a way to make those electrons flow from the oxidation site that the cells anode to the cells cathode, you've got a current. Yeah, it's very similar to a battery. So of course, a battery generates electricity through an electrochemical reaction that produces an excess

of electrons. The classic fuel cell that everyone hears about is hydrogen fuel cell, where you have hydrogen on one side of UM an electrolyte catalyst that blocks electrons from going through UH, and you have oxygen on the other side, the hydrogen and oxygen want to get together. So what you get our electrons dumped out through a kind of a back channel. The hydrogen and oxygen atoms get together, and then the electrons go through the channel, doing some

work along the way, and rejoined to create water. Which is why in your classic hydrogen based fuel cell the output you get you get electricity, you get heat, and you get water vapor. Uh. That's not the case of every single fuel cell. Obviously there are other chemicals, but that's the basic idea, and it is different from a battery.

But in both cases, you're generating electricity through a chemical process, right, and one of the one of the chemicals that's commonly used in most fuel cells is some kind of metal to help kick off that oxidation process. It's going to free up those electrons. But e f c s use stuff the current that commonly occur in living organisms, like glucose, which we have already covered totally occurs in your tears all the time. Um also stuff like lactate and exorbate.

Apparently it's much better than having to rely on something like platinum, which is what a lot of fuel cells use. It's also incredibly expensive. Oh sure, something like nickel that's a little bit toxic to human people. So that would not be great, right, I want to put that in

your eyes? No? No? Um so. So back in a team out of the University of Utah published their research involving a prototype contact lens that, when they said it in a bath of artificial tears, put out a little bit more than a micro watt of power consistently for about three hours. And if you're wondering, what's about a microwat of power, it's about enough to make an led

flash occasionally. Uh so, not not quite ready, not quite ready for your eyeballs yet, right, and in order to do anything appreciable other than make your eyes flash occasionally, yeah, you just see would be cool just twinkle maybe as the twinkles and not internal, right, like you're just getting getting twinkles, Like like you're just walking down the street and you suddenly have this blinding light filling up your vision for just a second, and you're, like my experience

seeing a visitation, especially of the eyes. If the contact lenses weren't synchronized in any way, that would be really distracting. Um So, yeah, obviously there's a lot more work to be done here, not just with the perfecting the technology, but then going through that whole testing phase as well

in actual use cases. Right. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I just I think that, And I'd love to do an episode also on on on e f C s in general, because they've been tested a whole bunch in in in blood and sweat kind of applications for blood, sweat and tears, you guys, Yeah, for for other powering electronics sort of purposes.

And it's a it's a lot more complex than the classic way of getting electricity out of the human body, which is piece of electric cells which which transfer motion of some kind into energy, uh you know, from macro energy from from the steps that you're taking or the Fossey dance moves that you're performing, to the micro movements of your of your heart or your lungs or something,

or even the flow of your blood. Yeah. So, uh, classic example of one of those materials would be courts, where you uh, kinetic energy will be converted into electrical output and vice versa. Actually, if you put electricity through it vibrates the courts crystal, which is why watches rely so many watches rely on courts crystals. So yeah, let's talk a little bit, you know, to kind of wrap this up about what we think the future is of this.

Is this going to be the future of augmented reality and potentially even virtual reality if you could completely replace someone's vision with a virtual overlay, which may never happen. I mean, I could definitely understand why that would be a bad idea. In some cases, you don't want to obscure someone's vision when they're trying to make their way

through a physical environment. Uh, Personally, I think because we know for a fact these contact lenses are not going to be ready for use for at least a few more years, potentially as far out as a decade, but not to the magical twenty to forty years that we often cite on this show, that it's not going to be the near term future of a R. A R I think for the next couple of years will focus mainly on headsets, like like the hollow lens are other

comparable pieces of hardware and not something that you would wear around all the time, but rather something that you specifically put on your face for for a practical application and then take off. Like I don't think that that any iteration of Google Glass is going to come back anytime really soon. Yeah. I know that they keep working

on it, but I agree. I don't think unless they make it so that's it looks like sunglasses and it has a compelling use, I don't see Google Glass coming back in a way that makes a real impact on the market. Now, what about something more like the hollow lens. I think hollow lens will have. Well, hollow lens is being being promoted as something that works in conjunction with your computer, and it's meant to be something that you

use near the computer. Microsoft is being very savvy in that they're looking at what Google did and saying, there are some things we want to avoid. We want to avoid that situation where you encounter a social stigma because someone's wearing a piece of technology on their face out

in public, and that is unusual. So it invites lots of issues like ridicule or being uncomfortable around that person because you're afraid that they are recording video of everything they see around them, or maybe even streaming it live. Now that we have apps that make that incredibly easy to do. Uh. The hollow lens instead is supposed to be used within your home or office, so that that's

one big difference. Another is that, like Lauren was saying, it's really meant for those those specific tasks you want to do, and when you're done with it, you take the headset off, whether that's playing a game or maybe

watching a movie. Because one of the really cool things I like about the hollow lens is this idea that you can designate a space in your physical surroundings to turn it into essentially a a flat screen television, and then when you look away, the TV stays where you put it, and when you look back, you know it's still there. That's kind of a cool thing, Like I can imagine that being a way of you upgrade your software on your whole lens. You don't have to go out and buy a new TV. That's kind of a

cool idea. Uh. The thing that really excites me about all this is that this means we're going to seek further development of augmented reality, assuming that it gets support in the marketplace, and then by the time these contact lenses are ready for purchase, there will already be a firm infrastructure in place to support a R. So that

means that uh, they won't. You don't have to wait for the content to be there for the technology to make sense, right that that these things would be happening fish fish tailing and development so that they they're both are dovetailing rather so that they Yeah, fish tailing is a separation, UM. But yeah, yeah, and even even if that never comes about, then the health applications alone are

really incredible. Definitely, So even if we never see these contact lenses as displays, the idea of them being able to monitor very closely these kind of various conditions could be a huge benefit to two thousands of people. And you know, I know that the taking that burden away where someone doesn't have that, you know, that sense of resignation that they have to draw more blood so that they can test themselves again because you know, they aren't

sure what their glucose levels are. Taking that away so that they are still being monitored safely and can get the treatment they need to manage their condition, to me, is a phenomenal story, and uh, it's definitely one that I'm interested in following. So we will keep our eyes on the contact lenses as opposed to the other way around, UM and make sure that we follow this development because I think, uh, you know, it's it has amazing potential.

It may take again several years for it to make its way through the FDA for approval, uh, but I think it'll have a really positive impact. So it's very exciting stuff. And uh, guys, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of Forward Thinking, maybe there's some technology or or maybe some story and science that you would love us to cover. Maybe there's just a question you have about a previous episode, or you have a comment

you would like to make. Send it into us. Our email addresses fw thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter we are FW thinking. You can search fw thinking over at Facebook and our our little account will pop right up. You can just leave us a message there. I think it's pretty safe to say we're gonna do a follow up about gravitational waves because there might have been some news you may have heard about it recently.

It just that news broke the day that we were going into the studio to record, so we wanted to have enough time to really research that before we do a whole podcast on it. But I have a feeling a lot of you out there are going to suggest that because some of you have done it already on Twitter. But thanks because that's awesome and we will talk to you again. Really sick for more on this topic in the future of technology, I'll visit forward thinking dot Com,

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