New smart contact lens equipped with micro battery able to give ‘superpowers’

Engineers have created a new smart contact lens incorporating a flexible micro battery and could give people ‘superpowers’.

French engineering school IMT Atlantique recently revealed what it calls as ‘the first stand-alone contact lens with a flexible micro battery’.

The autonomous, wirelessly-connected contact lens is a lightweight lens able to provide augmented vision assistance to user, and also relay visual information wirelessly. The lens is able to work without any bulky external power supply.

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The biggest challenge faced by the team was to store energy on small scales. However, with the help of the flexible micro battery, the lens was capable of ‘continuously supplying a light source such as a LED for several hours’, as per IMT Atlantique.

The lens was initially designed for medical and automotive applications, but according to French magazine L’Usine Nouvelle, it immediately caught attention of Microsoft and also the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is reportedly interested in the contact lens to expand their troop’s visual capabilities in the field.

The team suggested that ‘graphene-based flexible electronics’ could further advance the smart contact lens’ abilities. The applications for these smart contact lenses could range from assisting surgeons in the operating room to helping out drivers on the road, wrote Futurism.

“All the elements are ready,” project head Jean-Louis Bougrenet de la Tocnaye told l’Usine Nouvelle. “We should integrate it in October 2019 and hope to start testing in 2020. Then we will be able to go to the qualifying clinical tests.”