It’s Green Signal From USPTO For Google’s Smart Contact Lens
Written By: Rosalin Dhal
Innovation knows no boundaries and when there is will (and money :P) to innovate, nobody can stop you. In this techno-freak world, smart gadgets have become an essential part of human sustenance. Forget about touch screen smartphones and solar panels, scientists have developed Invisibility Cloaks that can make even Harry Potter envious. While scientists operating independently and for organizations continue to burn their midnight oil over improvements, Google has established itself as class apart in terms of innovation. From Driverless Cars to Anti-Ageing devices, the (re)search engine continues to amaze us. It has just taken a step further by inventing another smart gadget named as “smart contact lenses” that has recently been granted Patent by the USPTO. Google is looking forward to integrate the iris fingerprint authentication into its latest android M which will be launched this year.
Google had taken a keen interest in the contact lens from the very beginning. It already has seven patents relating to contact lenses, out of which one is pending. Present invention has a computerized camera which can track and generate image data of a scene corresponding to the gaze of the wearer, without obstructing the wearer’s view. It’s basically a smart contact lens which features a circuit containing light sensors which get fixed slightly over the iris. These sensors scan the eyes by collecting the reflected light from the iris to form an “iris fingerprint” which is then compared with an image of the same iris stored in the memory of a computing device for user authentication, i.e. if the image matches, then only the user will have access to the website or account.
Various reports also reveal that Google has been taking measures to use these biometric technologies in the field of health also. During the mid July 2014, Google entered into partnership with the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis for developing a smart contact lens featuring a tiny chip and a sensor that would monitor sugar levels for diabetes patient. There is a tiny pinhole that acts as a medium from which the tears would reach the glucose sensor which is embedded between the two layers of contact lens material and thus, measuring the blood sugar levels every second. The measurement would be transmitted wireless to a computing device so, that the doctor and the patient can view it. Google announced that they have already started working on the contact lens. But according to Novartis CEO, Joe Jimenez, this Google contact lens would be made available to the public not before 2019.
From research it’s concluded that contact lens can be used for a number of purposes and it’s not limited to biometric identification and measuring sugar levels. For example, it can be used for night vision or detecting several types of cancer or for detecting glaucoma. Not too many companies have bothered to venture into this field. Google has a nice platform available through which it can help relevant sectors by providing such innovative solutions to various technical problems.
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