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Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Roanoke Company Working on Super Vision

A Roanoke company is working on super vision for soldiers to use in combat. It sounds like if the technology becomes successful, it could have uses in the civilian sector. I don't know about you, but I think it would be neat to do some astronomy without using the telescope! Defense Industry Daily is reporting that the DoD is awarding over $3 million to develop the technology, which might allow vision as sharp as 20/08!
New firm PixelOptics of Roanoke, VA has announced that it will receive $3.5 million from the Defense Department to develop "SuperVision," a technology that may improve the vision of US soldiers beyond 20/20 via electro-active prescription lenses. The technology uses sensors and electro-active transparent material to alter the index of refraction of the lens dynamically, without any moving parts.

This provides a number of performance advantages, allowing the wearer to instantly achieve optimal vision no matter where they look (far, near, or in-between). In addition, lenses based on this technology show promise for significantly reducing momentary blurring caused by head tilt and movement, as well as distortion associated with conventional state of the art bifocals and progressive addition lenses.

The article quotes Dr. Dwight Duston of the company:
"Certain nonuniformities within the human eye are the cause of most vision deficiencies. Conventional aberrations, such as nearsightedness (myopia) and farsightedness (hyperopia), can be corrected with normal spectacle lenses to give 20/20 vision.

The spatial density of light receptors in the retina, however, is enough to allow human eyes to see better than 20/20, perhaps as well as 20/08. However, higher-order aberrations in the eye prevent us from attaining this "SuperVision" (the ability to have optimized vision better than 20/20).

These aberrations (e.g., coma, spherical aberration, trefoil, unconventional astigmatism) are not correctable with current conventional lenses available today from most eye care professionals."

I can't wait until they add the telescopic, night-vision, and infra-red options!

1 Comments:

At 12:08 PM, Blogger B O B said...

Great article Dan, I found it quite interesting. My physics instructor once went over how the eye develops problems because of some activities humans do when they read a lot, and lean down to look at a book, he says this causes the eye to eventually elongate and cause myopia.

Far sighted people were often found in the navy, who did deck watch through binoculars. The problem there was from not focusing on any one point.

He was an old ex navy Captain from WW 1 Characteristically, he would bean people with chalk when he thought they were not paying attention, which proved to be a remarkable way to get people to pay attention. He was an expert in ballistics which he emphasised greatly with his chalk.

 

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