Here's a unique solution to help blind people see: an electrode that stimulates nerves in the tongue depending on the brightness of an image.
Very much like USC's artificial retina project I wrote about a couple weeks ago, this device, known as the BrainPort, uses a glasses-mounted camera and an image processor to transform an image into a black and white array of pixels. The array is sent to an electrode, but instead of stimulating the retina, it stimulates the tongue using a "lollipop".
There's a learning curve involved since you're using your sense of "taste" rather than "sight", but the device has its advantages because it's non-invasive, the nerve fibers in the tongue are densely packed and closer to the surface, and saliva is a good conductor.
