Artist Wants Webcam Eye – Grinders Needed
A one-eyed San Francisco artist wants to replace her missing eye with a Web cam – and tech experts say it’s possible.
“I’d always given thought to using cameras to restore sight to the blind,” said Dr. William Danz, whose patient, Tanya Vlach, wants the groundbreaking device. “This is a little different, more like James Bondstuff.”
Vlach, who lost her eye in a 2005 car accident, wears a realistic acrylic prosthesis, but she’s issued a challenge to engineers on her blog: build an “eye cam” for her prosthesis that can dilate with changes of light and allow her to blink to control its zoom, focus, and on/off switch.
“There have been all sorts of cyborgs in science fiction for a long time, and I’m sort of a sci-fi geek,” said Vlach, 35. “With the advancement of technology, I thought, ‘Why not?’”
So, what she’s asking for is not that impossible a hack, right? Her actual Blog and her original request for help are right here. So here’s my stone cold serious question to all of you Grinders out there:
Do we have anyone in the audience who could help her? I know there’s a lot of engeneering, MAKE-o-philes and body modders who read this site. There are a lot of Grinders on this site, more importantly. Anyone out there have any ideas for her?
Very interesting–I don’t know a damn thing about that kind of stuff, but I’m curious as to if this actually works. Hopefully y’all will let us know if it does.
well. the technology is already there.
http://groonk.net/blog/?s=bionic+eye
(i swear i’m not trying to ‘plug post’. it was just easier.)
but would you really want Bre Pettis making something to put in your eye?
that’s not snark. that’s a serious question. i’d like to know.
I know a smattering about cameras, optics and the like. We already have the tech to at least build a fairly good eye, but the tricky thing is attaching it to the brain:
1. Our bodies are pretty good at attacking anything alien we stick into them, short of a few materials such as platinum and teflon, so this is a slight biological hurdle.
2. A bigger problem is we’re still not even close to getting a solid idea of how our brain works. This is the same reason we don’t have computers that plug into out brains yet. I think what’s really needed in this thread is for a neuroscientist to weigh in on the (for lack of a better term) communication protocols between eye and brain. Without these it becomes Difficult to connect your digital camera to your melon.
She doesn’t need or want it attached to the brain, though, that’s the key. All she wants is to fill that socket with a eye-shaped webcam with some fairly conservative specs.
That’s why I thing this is do-able, rather than general tech-wankery.
Ah, I see.
I suppose this depends on a few things, and foremost in my mind would be whether she wants it wired or wireless. Wired is easiest because otherwise you need the battery and broadcast equipment in there as well. It will, however be an irritating pain (and not great looking either) having a wire coming out of the socket.
A typical webcam will partly be just unecessary styling on the case, which could be disposed of for a more eyeball shaped case. The CCD’s will usually be attached to some control electronics that can do a rough job of varying the light levels so a working iris would be unecessary. The question then would be does she want it to simple store pictures for later upload (easy-ish) or to upload them directly to the internet (possible with the new generation of smartphones like my lovely HTC Touch Diamond).
Controlling it with blinks though? Sensing the blink might be a problem because we can do it both voluntarily and involuntarily and the hardware would need to be able to distinguish between the two.
Anyway, my interest is piqued purely from the point of, for example, being able to upload a flickr stream while on the move, regardless of where you stick the cam. I think I’ll pop over to her blog later and see if I can lend a hand….