Reading email and text messages on your smartphone? Soon even the most advanced smartphone could be out dated when you could directly read your e-mail through your bionic eye.

An international group of engineers are working on a device that will let wearers read text messages and emails on the world's first computerized contact lens with LED display. The bionic lenses is the brainchild of Babak Amir Parviz, an electrical engineer at University of Washington who teamed up with UW ophthalmologist Tueng Shen and a group of Finnish researchers led by optoelectronics professor Markku Sopanen, to create the contact lens that will bring humans one step closer to being cyborgs.

The bionic contact lens is composed of three components embedded in the lens. The engineers fixed a circular antenna along the rim of the lens. To stream content in the contact lens the team took a small-custom designed LED made with sapphire and embedded it in the center of the contact lens. They also added a miniature integrated circuit to connect the antenna and the LED screen.

The group also created a separate, non-computerized contact lens that has a special flatter lens called Fresnel lenses to allow a human eye to focus light from the LED.

The engineers were able to build a rudimentary prototype that they tested on live rabbits. The rabbits didn't suffer any abrasions or burning from wearing the lens. Despite their success with the live testing, the team says their bionic lens is still far from being mass produced.

The present design of the contact lens makes it hard for humans to wear for long periods of time. The computerized lens is made from hard plastic that limits airflow to the eye. Another problem is that the team can only send a pixel to the lens. Without the focusing micro-lenses, no one would be able to see anything.

Parviz and his team are working on overcoming these obstacles. They aim to increase the wireless range of the battery, refine the antenna design and create a multipixel contact lens display. Soon people will be checking their Facebook updates or streaming movies on their contacts.

"If we can make them as comfortable as normal contact lenses, you don't feel you're wearing them," Parviz said. "In a sense, it's the ultimate electronic gear that is totally unnoticeable."

The researchers presented their findings in the latest issue of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.