How smart contact lenses will create the sci-fi eyes of the future

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Contact lenses are about to get an upgrade.
(Image credit: Screenshot/Sensimed)

The feat of correcting vision with a tiny, permeable, and tear-friendly contact lens is impressive enough, but soon that will be only the beginning. Scientists are thinking bigger about what can fit in a small lens — and contacts are about to get a whole lot smarter.

"It's still a rather new idea to add [electronics] into the contact lens. It's a very exciting field," said Hongrui Jiang, a University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor who is working on developing auto-focusing lenses. "I hope more and more researchers pick up this direction and contribute to this, and maybe we could make these sci-fi kind of things quicker to reality."

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Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.