Lance-Corporal Craig Lundberg was blinded while serving in Iraq when he sustained injuries from a rocket propelled grenade (RPG). Although he said he felt lucky make it home, he returned without his sight.
Because Lundberg had been normal sighted before losing his vision, the British Ministry of Defense recognized him as an ideal candidate for an experimental device, called a BrainPort, that gives him the ability to navigate and recognize high contrast shapes and images using his tongue.
The BrainPort system consists of a pair of sunglasses equipped with a camera, which sends images to a hand-held device. The device, in turn, converts the images to “stimulation patterns” and sends them to the mouthpiece, which contains “hundreds of electrodes.” The mouthpiece is held against the tongue, where the patterns are produced as electric pulses that Lundberg has learned to interpret:
“You get lines and shapes of things, it sees in black and white so you get a two dimensional image on your tongue, it’s a bit like a pins and needles sensation,” he said.
“It’s only a prototype, but the potential to change my life is massive, it’s got a lot of potential to advance things for blind people.
“One of the things it has enabled me to do is pick up objects straight away, I can reach out and pick them up when before I would be fumbling around to feel for them.”
Since the BrainPort is in the prototype stage, it prevents users from speaking normally while the mouthpiece, or “lollipop,” is in use. Designers say future versions will be smaller and could potentially be permanently implanted in the mouth for “more natural use.”