Eyecam

Summary

What is Eyecam? Eye contact. Human eyes are crucial for communication. Through the look, we can perceive happiness, anger, boredom or fatigue. The eyes move around when someone is curious and took straight to maintain focus. We are familiar with these interaction cues influencing our social behavior. While webcams share the same purpose as the human eye —seeing—, they are not expressive, not conveying and transmitting affect as the human eyes do. Eyecam brings back the affective aspects of the eye in the camera. Eyecam is a webcam shaped like a human eye. It can see, blink, look around and observe you. Rethinking our relation with our digital world The purpose of this project is to speculate on the past, present and future of technology. We are surrounded by sensing devices. From surveillance camera observing us in the street, Google or Alexa speakers listen to us or webcam in our laptop, constantly looking at us. They are becoming invisible, blending into our daily lives, up to a point where we are unaware of their presence and stop questioning how they look, sense, and act. What are the implications of their presence on our behavior? This Anthropomorphic webcam highlights the potential risks of hiding devices functions and challenges conventional devices design. When the form matches the function Modelled on human physiology, Eyecam is composed of three main parts: the skin layer, the (robotic)musculoskeletal system and the eyeball. Movement and sight Eyecam comprises an actuated eyeball with a seeing pupil, actuated eyelids and actuated eyebrow. Their coordinated movement replicates realistic human-like motion. The device is composed of six servo-motors positioned optimally to reproduce the different eye muscles. The motors replicate the lateral and vertical motion of the eyeball, the movement of the eyelids closing and the eyebrow moving. The control of these motors is made with an Arduino Nano. A small camera is positioned inside the pupil, sensing a high-resol...