Eyesight with insight

Displays incorporated into eyeglasses have been the part of sci-fi pop culture for decades.
Picture Arnold Schwarzenegger sizing up his next target on his bionic eye, with flashing text ordering his next kill in Terminator. Far from being science fiction, headmounted displays are used currently by jet fighter pilots, racecar drivers, engineers, scientists, and the military and police.But current HMD (Head Mounted Display) technology is bulky, expensive and unintuitive.
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German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems are working on interactive data eyeglasses ��� a display that can be controlled by eye movements. By incorporating a CMOS sensor and a tiny OLED projector into a single 19x17 millimetre chip, they have the technology to produce a wearable display that can be mounted on an eyeglass frame. The display projects images onto the retina of the user as if it were at a distance of one metre.
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The augumented vision technology also incorporates eye tracking ��� users can influence the content presented by moving their eyes or fixing on certain points in the image. The eyeglasses would be able to track the movements of the wearer���s eyes, displaying relevant information. The wearer would be able to display new content, scroll through menu or shift picture elements without using a keyboard or a mouse.
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���We want to make the eyeglasses bidirectional and interactive so that new areas of application can be opened up,��� said Dr Michael Scholles, business unit manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems.
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Scholles claims his wearable displays will be small, light, easy to manufacture, overcoming the design limitations of conventional HMDs.
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The interactive eye-glasses could have many applications ��� a site engineer wearing the HMD connected to a PDA would be able to instantly call up building plans by looking at the construction. Surgeons would be able to monitor the patient���s vital functions, project X-ray and MRT images on the display, service technicians could receive real-time instructions for installation and repair.
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In industry and in the medical field, the interactive data eyeglasses could enable numerous tasks to be performed more simply, efficiently and precisely.
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Scholles and colleagues from other Fraunhofer institutes are expected to complete their work on an advanced version of the bidirectional eyeglasses, which should be ready by 2011.