Google patents contact lens system with built in camera

“Google has patented a smart contact lens that could see its Glass wearable computer fit inside a smart lens,” Mark Prigg reports for The Daily Mail.

“The firm has already developed a contact lens for diabetics analyses their tears, warning them if their glucose levels are low,” Prigg reports. “Now it has revealed plans for a lens with a camera built in – opening the possibility of its Glass system being shrunk down significantly.”

“The lens also has wireless capabilities allowing it to link to a smartphone, which can be used to process data and give the user audio commands,” Prigg reports. “Google also says the system will be able to detect faces…”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Sounds like a Glasshole’s wet dream.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]

26 Comments

  1. The problem is that people get all upset about the NSA. These same people don’t realize that Google is the commercial version of the NSA on steroids.
    Also as a side note I’m sure having contact lenses that emit bluetooth, energy,etc don’t increase the risk of ophthalmologic
    cancers, right???

      1. Thanks for your insight.

        It’s not a patent yet. It’s only an application. It’s also very pie in the sky, maybe this or maybe that specification wise- according to Patent Bolt – who was quoting another article back in mid March. Each article copied and embellished a bit too much and by the time you read it on MDN , it became magical. Still, I call BS.
        they haven’t even discussed the dynamics involved with an ophthalmology engineer. You cannot put something like this in your eye without seriously affecting your: vision , equilibrium , eye pressure, etc. You don’t just put something into your eye. You need a prescription. Contacts are all disposable now. You would have to throw out the $1200 lens each month or likely every 2 weeks.
        I suspect Google is just throwing more spaghetti at the wall in order to see what sticks or blocks other true innovation.

        L. Ron Hubbard was never a great author of literature. He did however, write a hell of a lot of sentences using a typewriter. Somehow, that worked for him. Maybe it will work for google.

  2. Google this Google that is getting old folks. They are a huge force to reckon with and frankly anyone who thinks that Apple is without its own efforts to deploy data mining activities on its users are either nuts or drowning in the Kool-Aid.

        1. Apple loyalists, as you call them, actually do ridicule competitors — delight in skewering them, in fact. That has to be obvious, looking over a month’s worth of postings at MDN or any other Apple-centric website.

          The reason for this casual contempt is the apparent superiority of Apple’s commercial philosophy, as evidenced by the blatant emulation of its products by all others.

          As I say, Apple loyalists do this. Apple itself, on the other hand, indeed takes competition very seriously. But you did not say that.

  3. If this is true, this is one of the great technical breakthroughs of our age. It’s hard to imagine how this can work without loads of additional hardware, but I’m waiting to be dazzled.

    For all those Google haters out there, imagine your reaction if one of Apple’s researchers had come up with this.

  4. Google has a plan. Eventually it wants to get into your brain. “When you think about something and don’t really know much about it, you will automatically get information,” Google CEO Larry Page said in Steven Levy’s book, “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives.” “Eventually you’ll have an implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.”
    Who wants Google in their head? Who volunteers for the Mark of the Beast?

    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-buys-drone-company-titan-aerospace-2014-4#ixzz2yuim5MWu

  5. Google has a plan. Eventually it wants to get into your brain. “When you think about something and don’t really know much about it, you will automatically get information,” Google CEO Larry Page said in Steven Levy’s book, “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives.” “Eventually you’ll have an implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.”
    Who wants Google in their head? Who volunteers for the Mark of the Beast?

  6. I seriously think there needs to be some sort of restriction to stop companies (Apple included) from patenting things they can’t remotely build. All this seems to be is saying that when technology gets small enough it will be able to fit in a small space.

    1. This *can* be built.

      Can it be delivered as a fully functional product to a mass market within the next couple of years at a reasonable price? Now that is debatable. However, the issue of whether it *can* or *cannot* be built is not debatable. It *can* be built.

      Also the USPTO (even in its over issuance of patents for some of the most ludicrous things) does have a restriction on one type of patent: Anything that appears to even have the possibility of violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics must have a working prototype submitted along with the patent application filing.

  7. mxnt41 is right. Not long ago, patent was a way for someone to protect his ability to profit from an invention he created.

    Today, entities such as Google have their engineers think up the wildest ideas and hand them over to their lawyers to draw up a patent application, even though no technology exists (or will exist for the foreseeable future) that can practically implement those ideas.

    This is like somebody going out there and patenting the concept of a Warp Drive (complete with the Dilithium intermix chamber). Although in their case, there could be a claim of “prior art” (in Star Trek)…

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