[pqdbr]

Magic Leap has a patent application for "contact lenses" technology [1]

Imagine if instead of having to put somewhat ridiculous and obtrusive glasses in front of your face, you could just use contact lenses that had this augmented reality capability.

It would be ... life changing.

[1] http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...

[strayptr]

The main problem is power. There's no way to project light into the retina without power, and it's difficult to get power to the lens without using wires. Induction is promising, but the falloff is dramatic. Meaning your inductive power generator would have to be pretty much on top of your eyes for it to power your contacts.

Glasses plus contacts might be a good idea. The generator could sit on the frames. The contacts would allow you to use a small amount of light to get the same effect as an Oculus, which means much smaller power requirements.

Still, to project light, you need some way of projecting light. It's hard to imagine something that can be embedded into a contact lens which is also transparent. And if it's not transparent, it's not really augmented reality.

Fun to imagine. Hopefully someone will come up with something.

[untog]

Do you need to demonstrate any kind of working model in order to patent something? As far as I'm aware, you don't. I look at this as an aspirational patent - frankly, exactly the kind of thing you'd see from a company with so much money they can spend all day dreaming.

[angersock]

It's worse than that...these folks (or whoever inherits the patent) can now sue anybody that actually can get it working.

This is a great example of patents being bullshit.

[ant6n]

Or by the time this actually is possible, the patents will have expired.

[danieltillett]

Yes the good old days where you actually had to show the patent office a physical working model which cutout alot of these pie-in-the-sky patents.

[bpicolo]

The contact lenses themselves wouldn't. Patent suggest something external would send light at the lenses if I read right

[stevesearer]

I read it the same way, that the contact lenses would act as filters for an external source of light.

Edit: Specifically: "Referring to FIG. 17, in one embodiment it may be desirable to have a contact lens directly interfaced with the cornea, and configured to facilitate the eye focusing on a display that is quite close (such as the typical distance between a cornea and an eyeglasses lens). Rather than placing an optical lens as a contact lens, in one variation the lens may comprise a selective filter."

[zyxley]

If you can fit the technology into contact lenses, you can presumably fit it into a normal-looking pair of glasses anyway.

[tomphoolery]

dammit, now I really have to learn how to put contacts in...