There are currently clinical trials of smart glasses designed to help vision impaired people to see and read letters again in the United States.
The “bionic eye” technology is made by a Paris-based biotech firm called Pixium Vision. It consists of a visor-like pair of glasses featuring an embedded camera. Images captured by the camera are beamed to a microchip implanted in the wearer’s retina. This signal is then converted into electrical signals that can be understood by the brain.
Participants in the trial had no central vision prior to the microchips being implanted. One year after the chips were implanted, the majority have regained the ability to read to some extent. Some can read only individual letters, while others are able to read sequences of letters. The image created by the implant is just 378 pixels in total. While this is far from restoring a person’s vision to 20/20, it nonetheless represents a significant improvement.