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Bionic eye that gives you NIGHT VISION and has 46x more ‘cells’ than human eyeball revealed by scientists

THIS bionic eye could give humans night vision and quicker reaction times in the future, according to new research.

Scientists have created a proof-of-concept version of the eye that's even more sensitive than a human one.


The device mimics the structure of a human eye and could one day be inserted into people as a prosthetic.

Researcher Zhiyong Fan from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology told Science News: "In the future, we can use this for better vision prostheses and humanoid robotics."

The bionic eye concept consists of a 3D artificial retina and nanowires that could mimic how visual information is relayed to the human brain.

The scientists wrote in their study: "Here we present an electrochemical eye with a hemispherical retina made of a high-density array of nanowires mimicking the photoreceptors on a human retina.

The eye has tiny nanowires
The eye has tiny nanowiresCredit: Gu et al./Nature
The bionic eye could be inserted into the human eye socket
The bionic eye could be inserted into the human eye socketCredit: H. JIANG/NATURE 2020

"The device design has a high degree of structural similarity to a human eye with the potential to achieve high imaging resolution when individual nanowires are electrically addressed."

The team, led by Fan, has designed the eye to have tiny sensors made of light sensitive material.

These should help it "see".

It also has an artificial retina
It also has an artificial retinaCredit: Gu et al./Nature

They've called it EC-EYE, short for 'ElectroChemical EYE', and think the technology could become "practical" in five years.

Fan said: "Our 'biomimetic' eye has a size comparable to a human eye - a bit more than two cm in diameter.

"It can be used for visual prosthesis to help the blind or those visually impaired. It can lead to a bionic eye.

"We hope to further improve our device in terms of biocompatibility, stability, and performance.

"I think if everything is on track, perhaps in five years the technology will become practical."

The nanowires can relay the information to a computer processor.

These tiny wires are so sensitive that they could result in night vision.

Fan told Inverse: "A human user of the artificial eye will gain night vision capability."

The eye is also said to react much quicker to changes in light than a human eye.

Every square centimetre of the bionic retina can contain 460 million nanosize sensors.

The human retina has about 10 million photoreceptor cells per square centimetre.

This suggests the bionic eye could even provide more precise and exact vision.

Fan told Inverse that eventually "a user of our artificial eye will be able to see smaller objects and further distance.”

Lots of work still needs to be done before a bionic eye like this could ever be inserted into a human but having this proof-of-concept is a leap forward.

This research has been published in the journal Nature.

What's a humanoid robot?

Here's what you need to know...

A humanoid robot is a robot with a body built like a human.

It may have been designed this way for interacting with human tools or in human environments.

Some of these robots may only have parts of bodies like arms or legs.

Some have human facial features and have been designed to look exactly like us.

Real-life bionic woman Winter Mraz wows GMB with magnetic power before loading website by scanning a chip in her arm

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What are your thoughts on bionically altering humans? Let us know in the comments...
