Considering the big fight to get augmented reality apps onto the iPhone, the concept of "Terminator-style" AR contact lenses seems little more than a pipedream, but that's exactly the technology laid out by Babak A. Parviz, a bionanotechnology expert at the University of Washington, in Seattle--references to killer robots from the future and all.

"These lenses don't give us the vision of an eagle or the benefit of running subtitles on our surroundings yet," writes Parviz. "But we have built a lens with one LED, which we've powered wirelessly with RF. What we've done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology."

Parviz goes on to detail the possibilities of such a technology, which, he points out, even in a simple state could be rather useful,

Even a lens with a single pixel could aid people with impaired hearing or be incorporated as an indicator into computer games. With more colors and resolution, the repertoire could be expanded to include displaying text, translating speech into captions in real time, or offering visual cues from a navigation system. With basic image processing and Internet access, a contact-lens display could unlock whole new worlds of visual information, unfettered by the constraints of a physical display.

Killer robots from the future rejoice.