CS 291I: Bionic Vision

What would the world look like with a bionic eye? This graduate course will introduce students to the multidisciplinary field of bionic vision, with an emphasis on both the computer science and neuroscience of the field. The course will give an overview of current bionic eye technology designed to restore vision to people living with incurable blindness. Students will be exposed to the neuroscience of the human visual system, key engineering concepts for designing a brain-computer interface, and computational principles underlying the encoding of a visual scene into an artificial stimulus that the brain can interpret. We will cover recent advances in theory and applications, and discuss outstanding challenges with existing devices. The course will conclude with a team project giving students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience of working on open problems in the field using methods and tools best suited to their scientific background. The course is targeted to a diverse audience spanning from computer science (human factors, computer vision, neural networks) to psychology (vision, psychophysics) and brain sciences (computational neuroscience, neuroengineering).