Artificial Eye - Can they do it?
 

I was watching the news the other day when I came across an interesting report. While some kid was getting surgery on his head, the doctors attached a little (well it was kinda big) device to his brain. Then the kid was able to play pac-man and stuff using only his mind! I was wondering, maybe one day when (It's just a matter of when) they make this tech thing smaller if they would beable to do something like that to make a fake eye. Kinda like a small camera in the eye socket that detects brain signals to move and such and sends the picture to the brain vie a small cord(s). (What would be cool is if they could give the person extra vision!!! Like see 50x further!) What do you guys think?

I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible.

We have robotic arms that can be controlled by thoughts, to some extent limited computer programs, so yeah.... in the future I can see it happening, as for the different types of visions, I can see that maybe happening too.

While it sounds cool though, would you really want to replace a perfectly good eye for a robotic one? Even if it was 'better'?

Yeah, its only a matter of time...

Eventually job aplications will read "Enhance-o-tech 70x vision or better required". :)

haha that would be funny.
As towards "Would I want to replace mine?" no of course not, but it would be cool incase you loose an eye. Blindness is one thing that I don't think I could handle (Apart from not being able to hear! hey, maybe they can fix that too... But you would have a bunch of wires in your head lol Kinda like that star wars scene with the fake Darth Vader......)

nothing special i think i already see this happening in a few years. Medical technology advances quite fast so...

sure why not, but I have a question, if we can build spaceships to the moon, why can't we build a car that gets 150 miles to the gallon (or at least 70)??????????

money.... economics etc..

Why have a robotic eye when you can grow a real one?
Online Video: regenerative medicine | Veoh Video Network
Sounds crazy at first, but the things that they can do right now are quite amazing.

That was already explained, artificial eyes will eventually be better than the real thing.

There have been prototype artificial eyes out for a few years now. They ahve also been installed in a few human test subjects.

The one I saw in the show was a plastic eye that had a 256 color CCD chip in the back. A CCD is the part of your digital camera that actually sees the image. The plastic eye had a CCD chip in the back and it had a cable that came out of the side of the guys head and went to a battery pack on his waist. The artifical eye was attached to the optic nerve. The guy could see objects and faces and could see but the quality was about equal to a homemade video made at night.

The new version which should have been out by now were supposed to have a 64,000 color CCD and the doctor in the interview said they could even do custom applications like Infrared and such allowing people to see in the dark.

IIRC the biggest part was improving image quality and perfecting surgery techniques to connect the eye output into a good part of the optic nerve.

Based on past stories in Science Fiction there have been occasions where the technology in the books could grow new organs and limbs and attach them except in cases where there was nerve damage.

Now one problem, what about depth? No, wait, the brain manages that... duh lol

I think it's okay to install an artificial eye, robotic arm etc. for the people who truly need them but I would limit to that: we shouldn't be playing god when it comes to humans. Eventually it would get into point where there are "normal" people and people with bio-technical add-ons, 1st and 2nd-class citizens, and then some demagogue would come up with ideas like "racial purity", "superiority of new huma race" etc.

So instead of having millions of incredibly complex and easily reparable machines that self replicate at a steady rate as they die off form (cells) form an eye that can see the entire visible color spectrum, something made out of electronics which are on such a low level of complexity that if one part breaks and it will break, it has to be removed and replaced whereas an organic eye's cells die off and replace at roughly the same rate at all times. In the future, organic eyes could be improved as well through genetics. It saves a lot of raw material at the least, and gives an eye that you can really feel is your eye. Also, please watch the video, the stuff they show is incredible.

We will all turn into robocops eventually.

Biological eyes already see better than any technology to date (Better than those huge 10MP cameras and HDTVs). I don't thing you can improve on nature too much, or even if the brain would be able to tell the difference (Ex: See better than a regular eye).

the only way to really improve on sight are to allow for better muscle control over the iris so you could refocus more easily, and to wire in possible over lays through the dream state, think a video game HUD in real life, albeit it wouldn't be very useful for the average joe in that way, it would be useful for soldiers, though dependence could cause issues: See the game- Haze. Using the power of the brain to render over lays onto sight is what I see as the future of computing, instead of surfing the web on a phone, you surf it while you walk, instead of putting on earphones, you can hear it all in your head. The danger though is spam and viruses causes havok on social and traffic interactions.

I believe something lke this already exist.
Yet the user is still almost blind, but he is able to see.

Seen it in a documentary a while back.

That hardly matters, we dont pass up jobs because we dont want to use the car and would rather walk, even though it can break down any moment and leave us "crippled". With the kind of infrastructure the first world possesses, augmentations would be easy to replace and repair. Its not like people would be walking around with borg-like structures on their face, its more than likely the eyes would look real at first glance, or even at close glance.

The thing is, a mechanical eye will never be better than an organic eye, it's simply a huge difference in complexity, and companies right now are working on the technology right now to actually regrow eyes, limbs, fingers, toes, etc. etc. directly on and from the body basing it on natural systems that we are all born with, simply by stimulating processes that become more dormant the more we age. Given the choice between a mechanical eye and regrowing the old eye minus any defects, I'm pretty sure people are going to choose the organic eye.

If an artificial eye could offer better image quality, other functions, and better durability than a conventional biological eye and I needed my eyes replaced for whatever reason I'd probably go with the artificial option.
On the other hand they might find out how to remove the limits on the amount of times things can divide, near-immortality, baring a violent death, doesn't sound too bad either.

Complexity does not equal superiority, and the fact we have need for such things as nightvision goggles and binoculars suggests that our eyes can and will be be improved upon. Sure, some people will stick with the eyeball Mark I, but other people wont, its that simple.

But, what if it were possible for organic eyes to get this features as well.
The features are out there,,,

notice something about night vision and binoculars, they both are objects that best work on top of human eyes. The amount of nerves that pick up light cover the entire surface of the back of the eye and are each smaller than the smallest accurate light detector yet, and they even see in color. Ever wonder why film quality is better than digital quality in photos, because it captures the light as it is and you view it with your eyes. The digital camera tries to act like the eye and use sensors, but there aren't enough of them and they aren't sophisticated enough to replicate the eye in the slightest, hence why pixels keep going up in cameras, though they'll fall short until we start using living technology. Some animals are capable of binocular like vision, while other's are apt at night vision, surely the effects can be replicated without replacing the eye with some poor copy made from metal and plastic.

I dare you to say you can pick out the pixels on a digital photograph that's being held infront you. You won't of course because you cannot, so the "resolution wont be high enough" argument is baseless, especially so considering were talking about the near future here.

besides, why would they be poor copies?

The thing is, do you want a vision that's 50x better? Think about it, you'd probably go insane from all those things hitting your mind all at once, not to mention everyone would appear vastly different.

It wouldnt be a problem because there would be settings, naturally.

Given the image is of vivid enough colors or contrast, I can indeed pick out a pixel from a megapixel image and so can anybody without farsightedness given that the photo is of course scaled to 100%, and that's not even what would cover an entire person's view range. The little details that make up the world that we see are what make it appear real and alive. Reduce it to pixels and your just replacing one of the most sophisticated and well working devices on the planet with a piece of junk.

They would be poor copies because they would attempt to do what the eye does, and whatever features you may slap onto it, it's still an attempt at making a copy of an eye.

I really can't see why you'd favor microchips over nerve cells, especially when the eye can be improved genetically.

If nothing else, this is a good thing for the blind. Besides, make anything 60 million pixels and you won't notice that it isn't analog/bio viewing.

In general, yes, but when it comes to specialized jobs such as a surgeon, soldier, or pilot, then I can see one specialized eye or at least a chip implant to be very useful. That said, those jobs are all likely to be performed largely by robots (with varying stages of independence), so we're pretty incapable of predicting to what level humans will be involved.

I want night vision dammit, and i want Infra-red too. Wouldnt mind a little higher resolution and an auto dimming device. Improve process frame rate of about 90+

Theres a large difference on how a camera and an eye percieves things. New research indicate that as much as 12 different, low quality "images" are send to the brain containing different qualities (edges, moving parts etc). The brain then "guesses" the percieved image. A camera cant prioritice what it depicts in the same fashion. So to develop an artificial eye you'd have to tamper with not only whats in the eye socket, but also the optic nerve and the visual cortex + cognitive processes. Improving on the biological eye sounds more feasible.

wow, ain't the eye amazing or what?

:ditto: And the threads name, i would say yes.

Hell, why not have USB slots in it so you can plug into the computer.

....

I'm going to ignore that and hope thats not an omen of what the human race is coming too...

Hello, My name is Microsoft sam, I.........*freezes*

IMHO of course it would be better to have organic replacement parts, its easier on the body.

But I picture situation where hardware will be preferred. Military applications such as SOCOM teams and maybe a post disaster situation where you have larger numbers of people needing prosthetics.

In alot of SciFi and Anime (Ghost In The Shell for one) you see poor people getting no prosthetics or cheap mechanical ones that obviously people can tell its a prosthetic. Then you have the high tech mechanicals that look more natural. Then you have the high end mechanical and at the top organic replacements. The goal is to get you back looking normal and not disfigured. The more natural looking the replacements the easier and more natural for you to blend back into society and function.

And in their own category because it would be a special use type things are the military hardware. Spec Op teams with bult in IR/UV/Night Vision gear with 10X zoom, auto targeting and auto tracking and ability to take hardcopy pictures that can be used for data analysis. Most prosthetics would have normal human abilities but military tech stuff would probably have more abilities than us civs and thus would be "More human than human"

Genetic Engineering was the whole point of Replicants in Blade Runner. Instead of hardware androids they built genetically engineered humans for military and labor tasks.

The problem was the Replicants did not have the advantage of a childhood learning to how to deal with situations and learning to deal with their emotions. Thus they were given a five year life span. Some when their end was coming didnt want to die and went on a killing spree or simply ran.

Thats when a "Bladerunner" was called in. Basically a cop liscensed to "retire" Replicants. Retirement usually meant a bullet through a vital part of the body be it a heart, lung, or head.

Thing is it's actually not that difficult to regrow an eye, it simply takes careful placement of the proper stem cells to begin the reconstruction process. In the video posted earlier, it showed treatment on patients with deteriorated pieces of tissue, and showed how the body can naturally heal itself of many wounds, it simply needs a trigger, which they found can come from liposuction fluid, yes that's right, stem cells out of liposuction fluid. The eye is much more complex to regrow than most parts of the body, but it's still possible, and probably rather cheap.

On the terms of military hardware I doubt many soldiers would willingly give up an eye for a fake one and if it only applied to people who lost their eyes in combat then they would seem like better soldiers, and that leads to a situation where it becomes successful to expose soldiers to shrapnel more often to get them to opt for replacement parts. With genetic technology how ever, you could for example replicate the effects of night vision that dogs have, or use the aforementioned dream state overlay for recon picture taking, though then soldiers are at risk more so if they get captured because they'll want to destroy the brain rather than a camera to get rid of information.

If they got the tech down and working id gladly give up an eye for a prosthetic that could serve as a unit identifier and low light capable vision source.
Its bad enough trying to stay connected with not only your own squad but associated units in a mix environment (ING/IA. Foreign coalition, PMC, op-for and civilians) but it gets worse when you through in smoke noise, terrible light conditions and malfunctioning comms and electronics equipment. If they could make it work id be the first in line.

If there are still malfunctioning comms and electronics who is to say whether or not the eye will malfunction or not as well? It's also rather hard to protect from EMP side effects as Faraday cages will obscure vision. Given the choice of an organic version or a tech version, which would you invest in?

Why would a Faraday cage be so hard to make? If the electronics get small enough, you can have the Faraday cage be the actual orb and keep the electronic components inside it. Mesh would work.

I wear glasses anyway so 'natural tech' hasnt much impressed me anyway. As it currently stands i cant replace my normal eyes so im stuck with shiatty vision ALL the time. if they get prosthetics working and i only have to risk having half shitty vision some of the time, id consider it an improvement.

I also wear glasses, and have a vision disorder on top of that, but replacing my eyes with some plastic and metal ball that would never feel quite right wouldn't enter my mind for consideration ever.

wonder if folks felt the same way back when pacemakers and shiat were being invented...

Your knowledge on available materials that can be used in prostetics must be pretty limiteds since you think in terms of simple plastic and metal alone. Have you ever had an eyeball replaced by the way? You must have, for you to claim it would never feel quite right.

I'd rather have artificial gills

Its very possible, but you would have to find away to modify the fake eye to see and work like a real one would. And that would be hard, trust me.

do you guys really wanna look like the adeptus mechanicus? I know I do!

http://www.fantasyplanet.cz/gfx/pict...8_21_55_47.jpg


seriously. if people like that existed in our society (minus all the built in weapons) think of what they could to do help. picture a doctor with all his tools built right in and a bionic eye to magnify what hes doing. it could really help

So much can be accomplished with organic technology that wouldn't compromise your appearance that such crude designs aren't really necessary

EDIT: towards Tas, plastics are the basis of most prosthetics today as far as I know, it comes in many forms and qualities, but in the end it's a plastic all the same. I've seen prosthetic eyes produced and it's very different from what an artificial eye would be composed of. Non-functional eyes are usually a glass or plastic hemisphere with a plastic rod that attaches it to the eye muscle so that it moves as the other eye moves so that it appears more natural. At least that's how I recall it being done ten years ago. Still I don't see the advantage of a mechanical eye over an enhanced organic one, it may even be cheaper and easier to produce.

If you do not see the possible advantage then you need to give the thread a good read through.