For anyone who doesn’t think that a year spent trying to work and socialize through video calling could get worse, here’s Eyecam: a anthropomorphic robotic webcam designed to look like a human eyeball that he even blinks and looks around the room. Maybe phone calls and emails weren’t so bad after all?
Eyecam was developed by a team of researchers led by Marc Teyssier at Human-computer interaction laboratory at Saarland University in Germany. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Teyssier was also the researcher behind one smartphone covered with artificial leather that a person could interact using physical touches, blows, touches and even pinches. It allowed emotional intentions to be transmitted to a device that otherwise cannot recognize those clues. For some reason, we thought it was as creepy as technology could get, but Teyssier came back to prove us wrong.
research will be presented in the future 2021 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The goal is not to scare everyone about video conferencing apps like Zoom and Skype – although no one would blame these researchers for being their ultimate game – but to bring the emotional connection that people experience during individual conversations to the situation. our current in which these interactions are not recommended.
Inside the Eyecam’s artificial eyeball is a cannibalized sensor and lens, which is surrounded by a fake silicone skull that allows for functional eyelids and an animated eyebrow powered by six electric servos that sit in place of the muscles. An Arduino Nano controls all engine movements, while a Raspberry Pi Zero allows this monstrous creation to interface with a PC like an ordinary old USB webcam. It is completely open-source and you can download all the digital files needed to create your own GitHub. A video with instructions on the whole construction process is still in progress.
Eyecmore or less looks like a real human eye (minus the rest of the human being), but the real goal of this research is to move and react like a real human eye to create a stronger emotional connection with a person by just seeing screen. Remember robot created by Disney Research designed to simulate a realistic human gaze by reproducing subtle movements that people perform unconsciously. This could be the result of filling and emptying the lungs with air or involuntary reflexes that react to nearby sounds or movements, causing them to look away.
By using facial tracking, there are some interesting future applications for Eyecam Instead of just looking randomly around the camera during a video call, the eye movements of the person a user is calling on could be mapped and reproduced by Eyec.I look at them, creating a deeper emotional connection. A hardware upgrade could even introduce the robot eye’s ability to shed a tear when things get more emotional. Although, with this sitting on top of your computer, you’ll probably want to do everything you can to keep the conversation light and jovial, so you don’t shed tears on your expensive hardware.
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