People oftentimes don’t appreciate the simple pleasures in life: being able to touch, feel, smell, etc.

However, those who have had the unfortunate experience of losing their eyesight (or another sense) quickly come to realize how integral it was in their everyday living.

For these individuals, the hope of one day being able to see again has been rekindled, thanks to members of MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies who have developed a "seeing" machine for blind people.

Bio-Medicine reports:

The portable seeing machine is about five inches square and mounted on a flexible tripod that makes it easy to carry. A digital camera is attached to the top. The visual feed from the camera travels into the seeing machine to a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) illuminated by LEDs. (This is the same kind of LCD common in cameras and TVs.)

 

The visual data is then focused into a single "point" that travels into the eye. "This is not magnification," said Smithwick. "What makes this work is focusing the data into a tiny spot of light."

We are now officially only one step away from cybernetic implants and/or hi-tech eye patches:

Could this mean designer eye patches will one day be in vogue?