Scientists do not have the technology yet to rebuild someone with bionic body parts. But the new bionic eye technology developed brings cyborgs one step closer to reality. They said that they had created a proof-of-concept bionic eye that could surpass the sensitivity of the human eye.
In an interview with Science News, Zhiyong Fan, at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that this new technology could be used for better vision prostheses and humanoid robotics in the future.
A detailed paper about the bionic eye is published in the prestigious journal Nature, describing that the eye is a three-dimensional artificial retina that features a highly dense array of extremely light-sensitive nanowires.
Fan and his research team installed tiny sensors made of perovskite-a light-sensitive material that has been in use for solar cells- to a curved aluminum oxide membrane. These wires mimic the brain's visual cortex, which sends the visual information gathered by these sensors to a computer for processing.
Bionic Eye 2020 Night Vision Capability
A human eye owes its wide field of view and high-resolution eyesight to the dome-shaped retina, which is located at the back of the eyeball covered in light-detecting cells.
To mimic this, the researchers used very sensitive nanowires that could surpass the real eye's wavelength range, which allows it to respond to 800-nanometer wavelengths, the threshold between visible light and infrared radiation.
That means that the new bionic eye has night vision capability when the human eye can no longer keep up. Fan told Inverse that, "a human user of the artificial eye will gain night vision capability,"
Furthermore, the scientists also claim that it can react changes in light quicker than the real human eye. It adjusts to changing conditions in a fraction of the time of about 30 to 40 milliseconds, rather than 40 to 150 milliseconds.
According to the paper, each square of the artificial retina can hold about 460 million nanosize sensors. That is a lot compared to the 10 million retina cells in the human eye. Meaning, the bionic eye could indeed surpass the visual fidelity of a real eye.
How Successful is the Bionic Eye High-Resolution Vision?
For the bionic eye to have a high-resolution vision, Fan and his team attached one by one, a small array of metal needles that are 20 to 100 micrometers thick using a magnetic field, to nanosensors on the synthetic retina.
"It's like a surgical operation," Fan says.
Fan told Inverse that they have yet to demonstrate its full potential in terms of resolution. He assures that eventually, a user of the bionic eye will be able to see smaller objects and further distance.
However, Hongrui Jiang, an Electrical Engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that the method the researchers are using in creating individual ultrasmall pixels is impractical.
According to him, a few hundred nanowires will be okay, but attaching millions would need a more efficient way to manufacture vast arrays of tiny wires on the back of the bionic eye to give it a superhuman sight. But he is hopeful for this project.
How long does it take to get a bionic eye? Jiang said that maybe in 10 years, humanity would see some very tangible practical applications of the bionic eyes, Futurism reports.
