CRI听力:Cyborg-Bionic Eye

It's usually the stuff of sci-fi movies, but by making his eye into a camera Rob Spence has turned science fiction into fact.

"I have a prosthetic eye with a camera right in the eye."

A team of engineers worked with Spence to create the eye using an endoscope camera. His eye isn't connected to his brain, but it does record everything he sees.

"I use this magnet and just wave it in the air - the camera - so then I'm ready to become "Eyeborg." So I just pop it in. I better get it in there snug, and there it's in."

It's pretty much like the plot of a science-fiction movie or video game where cyborgs are the norm.

Now the makers of the eye camera, Square Enix, have commissioned Spence to look at current technology to find out how far away from their fictional world we are now.

The technology used is the same that is in a wireless lapel microphone with a transmitter and receiver.

But the wireless device transmits a video signal rather than a sound signal from the tiny camera inside Spence's prosthetic eye.

Spence says the technology is evolving fast, and a world that contains cyborgs is not as far away as some might think.

"People say, 'Well, no one would ever cut off their arm and replace it.' If the technology gets there, which it looks like it will, people will think about it. They might be what you call an early adopter - a really early adopter - but people are going to have the option of having superior limbs, superior eyes at some point, so I think a lot of people will do it."

It seems the technology envisaged in "The Bionic Man" and "Terminator" might be here sooner rather than later.

For CRI, I am Li Dong.