WEB DESK – Scientists have developed the world’s first 3D Artificial Eye with capabilities better than existing bionic eyes and in some cases, even exceed those of the human eyes.
The key feature of 3D Artificial Eye allowing such breakthroughs is a 3D artificial retina – made of an array of nanowire light sensors which mimic the photoreceptors in human retinas.
Developed by Prof. FAN Zhiyong and Dr. GU Leilei from the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at HKUST, the team connected the nanowire light sensors to a bundle of liquid-metal wires serving as nerves behind the human-made hemispherical retina during the experiment, and successfully replicated the visual signal transmission to reflect what the eye sees onto the computer screen.
In the future, those nanowire light sensors could be directly connected to the nerves of the visually impaired patients.
Unlike in a human eye where bundles of optic nerve fibres (for signal transmission) need to route through the retina via a pore – from the front side of the retina to the backside (thus creating a blind spot in human vision) before reaching the brain; the light sensors that now scatters across the entire human-made retina could each feed signals through its own liquid-metal wire at the back, thereby eliminating the blind spot issue as they do not have to route through a single spot.
Apart from that, as nanowires have even higher density than photoreceptors in human retina, the artificial retina can thus receive more light signals and potentially attain a higher image resolution than human retina – if the back contacts to individual nanowires are made in the future. With different materials used to boost the sensors’ sensitivity and spectral range, the artificial eye may also achieve other functions such as night vision.
