Tanya Marie Vlach was severely injured in a car accident on her way to an arts festival on the day Hurricane Katrina devastated America. She made it out alive, but without her left eye. Imagine the hope she feels when she is able to find the opportunity to grow a new eye … one that will help her to appreciate art again, and give her more visual capabilities.
I can imagine this to be a breakthrough of huge proportions, especially if it can be done affordably! This kind of development can mean that people born without sight or with poor vision could potentially gain this ability to see the physical world. It also means that there are more opportunities to fit smaller cameras everywhere, which is a bit daunting. As if a fictional Big Brother wasn’t scary enough.
When Vlach put this call out to the world, it went viral and engineers and ocularists from all over flooded to help her out with this project. This is great, as it means that there is a lot of support on board ready and willing to help Vlach out with her cause. It’s very exciting to see this happen — especially firsthand for someone who has the expertise to do it and wants to help people out so badly.
With her project called “Grow a New Eye”, Vlach wants to lodge a webcam inside the white shell, which will transmit 720p video wirelessly to a receptor. There will a rechargeable battery powering this mechanism. I’m not entirely sure how they will plug it into the brain, but I’m sure that there will be a way to do it within the later phases.
If you want to support Vlach with her cause, please visit her page on Kickstarter. If you donate more than $5,000, you can even get your own eye camera! At the time of writing, she’s still in need of some more resources and I’m sure she’d appreciate all the help she can get. If you’re curious about her cause, check out her video on her Kickstarter page. [note: can we embed this video?]
If you liked this post, check out the Homemade DSLR camera or the Eye of Sauron.
