The industrial design student Minwook Paeng created a robotic third eye fixed on the forehead. It recognizes obstacles when the wearer's real eyes are glued to the smartphone.
The special “prosthesis” automatically opens the plastic eyelid when the head is tilted downwards and emits a warning buzz if danger is detected up to one meter ahead. I can't stop laughing, but I keep on for you.
The third eye allows users to navigate their lives as they text or scroll through Instagram, without interruption from real-world obstacles.
A er, good design proof
Before organizing a punitive expedition (I would like to ask your head) I must tell you that the third eye was developed by Paeng as part of his Engineering Innovation and Design degree at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. And it is a serious, technological project, but with (fortunately) satirical intentions, underlining a trend that we will have to explore further in the future: human beings are evolving into "phono sapiens". Will we get out of it before we transform?
Using smartphones and poor posture causes the vertebrae in our necks to lean forward giving us 'turtle neck syndrome' and the little fingers on which we rest our phones bend over time. If we don't change media, these small changes from smartphone use will accumulate and in a few generations will create a new form of humanity.
Minwook Paeng
How the robotic third eye is made
Built using the open source electronic platform Arduino , the device consists of a translucent plastic body attached directly to the forehead using a thin gel pad. The third eye housing houses a speaker and a gyroscope, a sensor that detects the phone's orientation and automatically rotates the screen.
In this case, the gyroscope serves to detect when the user's head is tilted downwards and opens the plastic eyelid to reveal a sonar sensor.
The black component that looks like a pupil is an ultrasonic sensor for detecting distance. When an obstacle is in front of the user, the ultrasonic sensor detects it and informs him via a connected buzzer.
Minwook Paeng
The real “third eye” is not Paeng's object, but the project itself
Within certain religious/esoteric traditions, the “third eye” (also known as theeye interior) is considered an organ capable of perceiving invisible realities located beyond ordinary vision. Paeng's project has a similar approach: it doesn't try to deny or denigrate our bad smartphone habits (me first and foremost). He accepts them as an inevitable reality and ultimately hopes to thereby make clear the absurdity of prioritizing screens over real-life interactions.
The smartphone has penetrated modern life so deeply that it is impossible to deny the evolution of phono sapiens. I hope that the act of humorously pointing out what we're doing with our smartphones can help people take time to think about it.
Minwook Paeng
