The Six-Billion Dollar Man: Vision. Do we have the technology?

We can rebuild him. We have the budget... but do we have the technology?

In the process of reviewing the proposed enhancements for the Six Billion Dollar Man, such as improved oxygen use, the following was discovered:

Enhancement: Bionic Eyes
Purpose: Implanted device significantly improves the visual acuity of the subject and provide limited night vision.
Mechanism: Existing eyeball (if any) is replaced with apparently identical version consisting of optics and photoelectric array. The replacement eye may also contain an infrared light source to provide active night vision illumination. Power is supplied by BodyGrid® while image processing and neural integration is output to the existing BCI, ThinkCap®.
Resulting visual acuity: Better than Snellen 20/1 (6/0.3). Upper limit unknown.
Feasibility: Unknown.

Please help fill in the blanks.

The power, image processing, and neural integration are taken care of, but what about the rest?

Can an artificial eyeball replacement be built which will increase the visual acuity of a person up to and beyond the value given and provide night vision? Assume projected 2050's era technology.

What is the best resolving power that can be achieved with this visual prosthetic? Simply through optics and feasible photoelectric array density, whether the brain can interpret the information has already been discussed.

The eyeball only needs to contain the optics, image capture electronics (if electronics are the way to go), and an IR light source if active night vision is required. It should externally appear to be a normal eyeball (from a little over a meter away, uncanny valley is ok) and be able to be connected to the extraocular muscles for normal movement.

posted almost 9 years ago

Samuel‭

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