London, November 14 Researchers are working on the idea of projecting images into the eye from a contact lens.

Scientists at the University of Washington are labouring on a contact lens that is a prototype of a device that could display information beamed from a mobile device.

The proposal was the brainchild of Babak Parviz, at the University of Washington, in Seattle.

"Our hope is to create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to 1 m away," News Scientist quoted Parviz as saying.

The expert further said that future versions would be able to gather power from a user's cell phone without obscuring the wearer's view.

Mark Billinghurst, director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory, in Christchurch, New Zealand, added: "A contact lens that allows virtual graphics to be seamlessly overlaid on the real world could provide a compelling augmented reality experience."

The team is due to present their prototype at the Biomedical Circuits and Systems (BioCas 2009) conference at Beijing. (ANI)