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• T Ghosh

  

  • 144 posts
   

  January 29, 2014 8:51 PM IST

   

  Google X - doesnt it sound so coooll ?

  Yeah  !!  This time Google  has come up with a contact lens that will measure the glucose level of a person in real time. The product is still in early stage of development. For now Google is testing prototypes and how they can be best used. But if successful, this contact lens may help diabetics say goodbye to painful needles that they have to use several times a day to successfully monitor their blood glucose level.
  
  According to Google  the  glucose level in a human body can be measured from tears. "But as you can imagine, tears are hard to collect and study.

  At Google X, we wondered if miniaturised electronics—think: (silicon) chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair—might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy,"
  
  Google X is special division inside the web company that works on future technologies. It is headed by Google co-founder Sergei Brin.Google Glass, which is essentially a small computer with a tiny head-mounted display, also came out of Google X. Glass too started as a prototype but last year it was sold to early adopters. It is likely to be widely available in retail stores this year.
  
  
  The current prototype of the contact lens can record the glucose level every second. "The product measures glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. We're testing prototypes that can generate a reading once per second. We're also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we're exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds," said Google team
  
  While it started as a web search engine and still makes most of its money from displaying web advertisements, in the recent years Google has become very ambitious, arguably the most ambitious technology company. It is working on several technologies that are straight out of future. The company is developing driverless cars, which use sensors, cameras and virtual map technologies, to travel on roads without any assistance from humans.
  
  Google is also stepping up its game in robotics and in the last one year has acquired several companies, including Boston Dynamics which makes robotic cheetah and dogs, that are working on next-generation of robots. Recently, it acquired Nest, maker of a smart internet-connected thermostat, most likely in a bid to explore the concept of web-connected homes and appliances that would be controlled with a smartphone.
  
  A few months earlier, Google CEO Larry Page said in an interview that his company was looking to fundamentally change the world. "We have all this money, we have all these people, why aren't we doing more stuff? I feel like there are all these opportunities in the world to use technology to make people's lives better. At Google we're attacking maybe 0.1 percent of that space. And all the tech companies combined are only at like 1 percent. That means there's 99 per cent virgin territory. If you're not doing some things that are crazy, then you're doing the wrong things," said Page.