Cyclops Gives Hope to the Blind

Revolutionary improvements in technology have created refreshing hope for people that are born without sight. The California Institute of Technology have been one of the leaders in this field of study by encouraging scientists that are working on making new tools that will make life a lot easier for the visually impaired. One of them is a mobile mechanical innovation referred to as Cyclops that is manipulated by a remote control. Cyclops was established with the ability to imitate how the world would appear to a blind person with an fake retina or any other visual prosthetic device, making it the first device to show many people what the universe looks like according to their view point.

The images that are caught by the machine are then formed and passed along to the entrenched silicon chip's electrode array. Artificial retinas are created from chips made of silicon that have electrodes that stimulate retinal nerve cells. The captured pictures are then shaped and handed along to the implanted silicon chip. Once there, the chip immediately induces the eye's functioning retinal ganglion cells, that will then deliver the image to the brain. The remote control device fulfills an emptiness in the form of trying out visual or optical prostheses. This will let scientists create a better way to improve the product.

In order to do this many trials must be done by the retinal implant research team. Due to few people globally having been engrafted with retinal prostheses, and there is only so much experimentation they can be inquired to endure. This is one of the essential reasons Cyclops would be so worthwhile.

The aparatus can't be active independantly yet but the camera can make reasonable up and down movements as well as to the left and right. And although the scientists have made a joystick that can determine movement, there is also the option of operating the machine through a wireless Internet connection.

Among the matters they hope to discover from such testing is how to enhance an environment to make it more accessible to a blind individual with a specific vision implant.

The final results from the tests on the Cyclops robot should likewise help researchers discover whether a particular version of a prosthesis or its onboard image-processing software package, are even worth trying out in blind people. The hope is that blind people will find the device so easy to use that they will be fully self-supporting when it comes to walking, recognizing friends and family and living a regular life.

Research for making Cyclops was made possible due to a grant from the National Science Foundation. Present day work is being conducted by Caltech's Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory team.