Craig Lundberg is the first British soldier to trial the revolutionary BrainPort system that allows his tongue to do what his eyes cannot. Now, acting as a guinea pig for the latest virtual eyesight system, Craig has regained some semblance of sight. It just gives me a sensation on me tongue to identify objects, he says. So the best way to sort of explain is, someone drawing a very detailed 2D picture on me hand and I get the object of someone drawing on me hand. The BrainPort vision system consists of a postage-stamp-size electrode array for the top surface of the tongue, a base unit, a digital video camera, and a hand-held controller for zoom and contrast inversion. Signals from the camera are sent to the flat lollipop-shaped sensor in the mouth that stimulates the tongue in the shape of the image picked up by the camera. It can even distinguish between different shades of light, reflecting them with varying strengths of pulse. Lundberg lost his sight in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Basra, southern Iraq, in 2007.
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