Terminator-style transparent eye-tracking OLED display on the way

The Gadget Show  Thursday 21 April 2011

It looks like something from the Terminator, but Fraunhofer IPMS have created a tiny transparent OLED display that’s capable of tracking your eye. This tiny computer screen can create an augmented reality that you could potential view wherever you go.

The diminutive eye-tracking transparent OLED display from Fraunhofer IPMS is little larger than one half of a pair of specs. Indeed, the screen itself is little larger than an eyeball, sitting in front of your eye, tracking any movements, and overlaying information for you to view.

However great the technology looks, we can imagine it proving absolutely lethal if used in the way intended, however. Fraunhofer has a vision of keep-fit fanatics casually watching The Godfather while they run down the road, but we only have to look at the general lack of attention caused by MP3 players and sat-nav devices to see that such a use would be a recipe for disaster.

That’s not to say we’re not impressed though. Perhaps this could be the future of smartphone screens – which would be perfect for secretly reading messages when we should be working. We’d be even more impressed if Fraunhofer IPMS could cram the screen onto a contact lens!