Contact Lenses Inch Toward Heads-Up Displays

Sci-fi dreams of our youth are one step closer to reality.

You know those scenes in the Terminator and Robocop films that take the point of view of the cyborg-ish main characters? Well, scientists at Washington University have taken humanity one step further in that direction, as they've invented a bionic contact lens that can display a bit of light in the wearer's eye with no significant negative side effects. The flexible lenses must be worn near the wireless power source, can only emit one diode of light, and have only been tested on rabbits. But the research team thinks their successes so far pave the way for them to build more powerful contact lenses that could contain everything from vital health statistics, directions to where the wearer is headed, or, as the video below suggests, giving us night vision or the ability to zoom in on objects far away. We'll believe those uses when we see them (har har), but we're more than stoked that we could have a heads-up display in our eyeballs informing us of, say, where the closest roti shop and/or destruction-bent robots from the future might be.