Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

12
  • 48
    $\begingroup$ Human eyes consume energy. Why doesn't the artificial eye use the same source of energy, namely the glucose in the blood stream? It must already be able to interface with the optical nerve to send encoded pictures to the brain, and with the motor neurons which carry commands from the brain: and for this it needs to be able to manufacture the required neurotransmitters; so it must already have a means to tap into the blood stream for proteins etc. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 12:51
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @AlexP is glucose enough to run electronics? I do agree using already made sources of power in the body is a good idea $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 13:12
  • 15
    $\begingroup$ The human body consumes between 100 watt at rest and 150 watt doing light work. A compact digital photocamera consumes about 2 to 3 watt in movie mode. I'd say there is plenty of power to spare. How to convert the chemical energy of glucose into electric power is a simple engineering problem. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 14:48
  • 12
    $\begingroup$ @AlexP: Fuel cells that run on glucose already exist, and are being developed for biomedical applications, e.g. chem.utah.edu/news/glucose-biofuel-cell.php WRT power consumption, a lot of the digital camera's power is used for non-imaging things, like running a backlit display and writing the video to memory. One could also assume a couple of generations of improvement in low-power electronics... $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 17:15
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ You mention nuclear power - this would be infeasible for 2 reasons. One is that nuclear power does depend on scale - if you don't have enough material to maintain fission, the amount of energy produced is practically 0. The second is that nuclear power depends on temperature differential - that's why they have massive cooling towers. Nuclear power generates heat, you need to dissipate that heat. Your eye socket will burn at 44 centigrade (109 Fahrenheit). $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2019 at 19:31