Near future
Contact us
  • Home
  • Tech
  • Health
  • Environment
  • Architecture
  • energia
  • Transportation
  • Spazio
  • AI
  • concepts
  • Gadgets
  • Italy Next
  • H+
June 28 2022

Coronavirus / Russia-Ukraine

Near future

News to understand, anticipate, improve the future.

No Result
View All Result

News to understand, anticipate, improve the future.

Read in:  Chinese (Simplified)EnglishFrenchGermanItalianJapanesePortugueseRussianSpanish

Eyecam, the prototype of a “human” webcam that makes my skin crawl

A webcam in "flesh, bone and hair"; with a lot of eyebrows? Eyecam is scary, and a lot. But it can finally make us reflect on many things.

Gianluca Ricciodi Gianluca Riccio
in concepts, Technology
Share25Pin7Tweet16SendShare4ShareShare3
webcam eyecam
April 9 2021
⚪ Reads in 5 minutes
A A

What if the way a webcam looks like ours?

Eyecam is a prototype that explores the future potential of sensing device design. What is it about? Basically it is a webcam in the shape of a human eye. It's awful, guys. It makes an impression, indeed. Apart from that, he watches us, blinks, looks around and does other things normally the prerogative of a human eye.

Ok. It's not a webcam, it's a nightmare.

Detect the sensations that we can have in the presence of "sensitive" devices that act in the form of an anthropomorphic webcam? It is the goal of the study of Marc Teyssier, Marion Koelle, Paul Strohmeier, Bruno Fruchard e Jurgen Steimle. The team from the University of Saarland in Germany developed this project to make us reflect on the attention we pay to the devices that surround us.

Sensing devices are everywhere, to the point where we become unaware of their presence. Here: this webcam stands out and how.

Maybe you are also interested

DARPA tests a smart camera that mimics the human brain

Vision problems or blindness: three fantastic technologies

Swimsight - wearable machine vision for visually impaired swimmers

Eliminating alcohol, ClearMate can make you sober instantly by blowing it away

Everything comes from the eye

webcam eyecam

Eye contact . Human eyes are essential for communication. Through the gaze we can perceive happiness, anger, boredom or fatigue. Eyes move when someone is curious and squints to stay focused. We know these interaction cues that influence our social behavior. 

Although webcams share the same purpose as the human eye (that of see) are not expressive, do not transmit and transmit affection as human eyes do. Eyecam reports the affective aspects of the eye in a webcam. How does it make you feel looking at it?

Rethinking our relationship with the digital world

webcam eyecam
I've never seen a webcam like this. And I think I never want to see it.

The purpose of this project is to speculate on the past, present and future of technology. We are surrounded by sensing devices. The surveillance camera that observes us on the street, the Google or Alexa speakers that answer us (but above all they listen to us) or the webcam in our laptop .. They are becoming “invisible”, they merge with our daily life, to the point that we are not aware of their presence. What are, however, the implications of their presence on our behavior? 

This anthropomorphic webcam highlights the potential risks of hiding device functions and challenges the design of conventional devices.

This stuff (um, this webcam) looks real

webcam
Marc Teyssier taking a look (literally!) At his webcam

The effect of this prototype is rather creepy. Eyecam has an activated eyeball with a seeing pupil, eyelids and eyebrows. Their movement replicates the movement of the human eye. The device consists of six servomotors that replicate the lateral and vertical movement of the eyeball, the closing movement of the eyelids and the displacement of the eyebrow. The control of these motors is accomplished with a Arduino Nano. A small camera is placed inside the pupil and detects a high resolution image. In summary: it is kind of an eye, but it is detected by the computer as a normal plug-and-play webcam.

Gianluca's immediate mental connections? ExistenZ, Cronenberg's movie with the game console made of meat, and of course Black Mirror.

How does Eyecam behave?

The webcam watches around people entering the room. To make it feel good if you browse anonymously, you have to make it fall asleep. Crazy.

This webcam is not only designed to look like an eye, but also to act like an eye. Like a human eye, Eyecam blinks and dynamically adjusts them to the movements of the eyeball. This webcam can be autonomous and react by itself to external stimuli, such as the presence of users in front of "her".

And that's not all: in the intentions of its creators, the device can interpret what is happening in its environment. With its computer vision algorithms it can process the image flow, find relevant features and interpret what is happening. Do you know this face? Should he follow her? Etc.

Eyecam is disturbing, unusual, strange. It raises speculation about the aesthetics and functions of the devices. 

Not bad for a webcam, right?

Eyecam allows critical reflections on the functionality of devices and their impact on human-human and human-device relationships. This opens up a debate on plausible and implausible ways in which future sensing devices could be designed.

Should the device be transparent and invisible to the user? What is the balance between mediation and intrusion? How can you respect privacy and show the user that they are being watched? How can we design smart devices to be present where needed, but respectfully absent when not?

While looking for answers to these questions, remember that someone: sorry, something is always watching us.

tags: devicesartificial visionwebcam
Previous post

A stone slab found in France is the oldest map in Europe

Next Post

The Boring Company: in the Las Vegas tunnels with 16-seat Tesla?

COLLABORATE

To submit articles, disclose the results of a research or scientific discoveries write to the editorial staff
  • BrintØ, an artificial island to produce green hydrogen

    BrintØ, an artificial island to produce green hydrogen

    148 Shares
    Share 59 Tweet 37
  • A plant-based, antimicrobial 'coating spray' keeps food fresh

    76 Shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • Solar paint: where are we?

    378 Shares
    Share 151 Tweet 94
  • Liteboxer Bundle, the boxing machine for killer workouts

    763 Shares
    Share 304 Tweet 190
  • Move objects with thought? Telekinesis is a matter of technology

    141 Shares
    Share 56 Tweet 35

archive

Have a look here:

First digital fabric in the world: every dress will become a computer
Technology

First digital fabric in the world: every dress will become a computer

The special fabric developed by MIT can create real wearable neural networks.

Read More
stellar scooter 3

STELLAR, the solar-powered scooter inspired by spacecraft

Why Covid will not kill cities

Why Covid will not kill cities

Christmas in times of crisis: technology and convenience

Christmas in times of crisis: technology and convenience

India loses contact with its Vikram Lander

The daily tomorrow

Futuroprossimo.it provides news on the future of technology, science and innovation: if there is something that is about to arrive, here it has already arrived. FuturoProssimo is part of the network ForwardTo, studies and skills for future scenarios.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Environment
Architecture
Artificial intelligence
Gadgets
concepts
Design

Staff
Archives
Advertising
Privacy Policy

Medicine
Spazio
Robotica
Work
Transportation
energia

To contact the FuturoProssimo editorial team, write to [email protected]

Chinese Version
Édition Française
Deutsche Ausgabe
Japanese version
English Edition
Edição Portuguesa
Русское издание
Spanish edition

This work is distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
© 2021 Futuroprossimo

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Tech
  • Health
  • Environment
  • Architecture
  • energia
  • Transportation
  • Spazio
  • AI
  • concepts
  • Gadgets
  • Italy Next
  • H+