The Department of Defense (DOD) is working on contact lenses that would enhance soldiers’ vision to improve intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activities without the need for specialized equipment that is currently used in the battlefield.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) agency is doing work at Washington-based Innovega iOptiks to create wearable eye lenses with tiny, full-color displays onto which digital images can be projected to give the wearers better situational awareness, according to the agency.

The lenses would allow users to focus simultaneously on images that are both close up and far away, which would improve their ability to use portable displays while still interacting in real time with the environment around them, according to DARPA. A graphic on the agency’s website shows the basic design of the lenses.