New technology has the potential to change lives of people who are blind. A bionic eye or in simpler terms, an artificial eye is a retinal system designed to restore vision of blind people. The system consisits of an external camera, a battery and an electrode array that is surgically implanted at back of eye. So after the surgery, what will the person see? The lead researcher of Bionic Vision Australia, Dr. Nigel Lovell, has released a GIF of himself showing how person using the artifical eye will see himself.
The image below shows how the system looks like. In the glasses, there is a small camera which takes the images and sends them to the image processor which can be seen on the side of the glasses.
Here is a diagram of how the overall system works.
The current version has only 96 simulating electrodes while researchers are working at bionic eye that contains 1024 electrodes stimulating electrodes. The 1024 electrode system will give a much higher image resolution. We wish researchers at Bionic Vision Australia good luck.