Wow, that video blew my mind. Amazing progress by humanity, two thumbs up!

Sorry to pop the bubble here, but as a "World First" this has already been done, as far back as 2000 [Dr. William Dobelle]. There are many institutions working on this approach to making a prosthetic ocular device.

This one's approach is called a Retinal Implant, but the Dobelle approach (and many others) use a direct Neural Implant (complete with head-socket). They tested the implants/sockets on 9 individuals since the early 1980's and found little to no infection or contra-indications. It afforded a vision of 20/200 in the initial trials and improved up to 20/80 in the later trials. This later approach requires an external camera (likely mounted to a pair of glasses). I believe you can still get this operation done in Portugal.

The former approach of Retinal Implant (JUST like they show here) has been functioning by the Argus Group (USC & John Hopkins) since 2002 and is already approved by the FDA for a second generation trial of 60 individuals.

What puzzles me is why we hear so little about these amazing breakthroughs (years after the fact) and are instead so "up" on 'popular' news to the minute.

"We believe we have the most advanced technology in use in the world"

That, and kangaroos. Two-nil australia!

You laugh, but you havnt walked in the labs and seen the equipment we got.
The aussie science arena is no push-over.

*future

Adding video to channels (Future) - requested by jonny.