S.Korean designer creates “Third Eye” for “smartphone zombies” https://t.co/R6DthT3PCc pic.twitter.com/9zyOKg2Sl2
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 4, 2021
A ‘postgraduate in innovation design engineering’. I hear that’s a tough job market — seems like a good way to attract recruiters’ attention:
… Paeng Min-wook, 28, has developed a robotic eyeball he has dubbed “The Third Eye”, which obsessive mobile phone users can strap to their foreheads so they can browse injury-free on the go.
The device opens its translucent eyelid whenever it senses the user’s head has been lowered to look at a smartphone. When the user comes within one to two metres of an obstacle, the device beeps to warn of the impending danger.
“This is the look of future mankind with three eyes,” Paeng, a postgraduate in innovation design engineering at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, told Reuters as he demonstrated use of The Third Eye around Seoul…
Paeng’s invention uses a gyro sensor to measure the oblique angle of the user’s neck and an ultrasonic sensor to calculate the distance between the robotic eye and any obstacles. Both sensors are linked to an open-source single-board microcontroller, with battery pack…
Paeng said The Third Eye was meant as a warning, not a real solution for smartphone addicts who won’t pay attention to where they are going.
“By presenting this satirical solution, I hope people would recognize the severity of their gadget addiction and look back at themselves,” he said.
debbie
I see so many people walking with their faces buried in their phones and wonder how they do that without tripping and falling?
trollhattan
@debbie:
Am even more appalled by/concerned for bicyclists rolling along with the phone planted to the side of their face, often not holding the bar with the other hand. In traffic. I mean, what the actual heck are they thinking?
Old School
Can I use it to warn me when the boss is going to peek in on me?
Baud
Wouldn’t you need a fourth eye for that?
satby
sounds funny, but 10 years ago while I still took the train downtown from the south side, I and another passenger who had disembarked at our stop grabbed a girl who was about to walk in front of a train passing on the other rails. She was too busy yapping on her phone to notice the moving train less than 20 feet away.
and that was before we had so much more distracting crap on phones too.
Obvious Russian Troll
My favorites are the ones who half-see you and try to zig-zag across the sidewalk to avoid you. When they inevitably bump into you, they act all offended as if it was your fault that they weren’t watching where they were going.
C Stars
Oh gosh, I was glad to read at the end that this was satirical. You never know…
Spanky
The only third eye for me will forever be Nick Danger.
Am I first to invoke him?
bk
@Spanky: I was just about to!
West of the Rockies
@Spanky:
I was ready to say that I had one of these devices, but it broke. Now I’m third-eye blind.
I’ll show myself out.
Jeffro
or…hear me out here, people…folks could just. put. down. their. phones. for a minute and walk wherever it is that they’re going.
Too much to ask? Yeah, I kinda thought so.
I know this is a respite thread but in the next thread, I look forward to talking about Henry Olsen’s latest in the WaPo. It’s all about just how ready the GQP is to shed its orange Frankenstein and move on to its usual agenda of hate and economic malfeasance.
MomSense
@Baud:
Or the Mad Eye Moody eye.
phdesmond
@Spanky:
i third the motion!
Anotherlurker
@bk: Me too! I was sitting here listening to the pitter patter of rain on my desktop, I looked up and …..
I thought that 3rd eye would be a good line to add to my business card.
Obvious Russian Troll
@satby: I saw on youtube some kid in Toronto walk out without looking up directly into an ambulance with its sirens on. I don’t believe he was hurt, but the ambulance crew had to stop to check him out.
NotMax
Flashing back to the walnuts episode of The Dick van Dyke Show.
:)
BruceFromOhio
I like this guy.
@Jeffro:
Ya know, they used to burn heretics.
Baud
@Jeffro:
And miss a second of Balloon Juice? Never!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@trollhattan:
I saw a woman pedaling along hands free because she was holding her phone in one hand and swiping the screen with the other.
Raoul Paste
@NotMax: The walnuts episode is a classic
mrmoshpotato
Dreaming of that face again.
It’s bright and blue and shimmering.
Spanky
@Anotherlurker:
“Rocky Rococo, at your cervix.”
OzarkHillbilly
Meanwhile, I’m just trying to get an automatic chicken door that actually does what it promises. 3rd attempt, 6 dead chickens.
On/Off. They can’t even manage that, but I have a 35 y/o worm drive circular saw that still can*. Fuck this “new” technology.
*Why in the fck can I buy a truck with all this techno gizmo stuff that by and large actually works? But never a simple chicken coop door that will?
I know why: Profit.
Martin
@OzarkHillbilly: Not sure profit is the answer, but surely you can see the market for chicken doors is smaller than that for trucks.
Plus, chicken door seems like something a farmer would build out of the remnants of a slave building and a tractor that fell in a pond in the 1930s.
Oh, and Skil saws are indestructible – agree with that.
Spanky
@OzarkHillbilly: Seriously? Your chicken door is killing chickens?
Six chickens is like, 2 doctor visits in Arizona.
Comrade Colette
@OzarkHillbilly: I will display all of my not-even-a-little-bit-country naïveté by asking:
Did the previous failed doors kill the chickens, or were they killed by something outside the doors when they couldn’t get inside?
Baud
@Comrade Colette:
Suicide.
OzarkHillbilly
Surely you can see that making a door open and close at the proper times/light levels is a whole lot simpler than making a vehicle run. Than again, maybe you can’t.
,
Benw
TOOL Third Eye
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51fcG3sxvII
bk
@Spanky: No anchovies? You’ve got the wrong man. I spell my name Danger
TomatoQueen
There was a long long moment in the life of the DC Metro commuter during which all cars on all trains were full of passengers who had plugged their ears with pieces of white string.
OzarkHillbilly
@Comrade Colette: Weasels and raccoons.
I swear to dawg, getting a door that opens and closes when it is programmed to (I, luddite that I am, do not do this. I leave it to my techno geek wife who works with this stuff 5/6 out of every 7 days because I KNOW I would screw it up.
Anotherlurker
@Spanky: What kind of fool do you take me for?
First class!
Anotherlurker
@bk: Susan Underhill, Audrey Farber, Betty Jo Bielosky?
Oh, you mean Nancy!
RSA
Distracted Walking Puts 1,500 People Into the Hospital a Year
Back when I was doing research in on mobile devices, it seemed reasonable to look at phone’s camera itself for monitoring. Even held horizontally at waist level, my camera’s field of view extends maybe 1.5 m in front of me? If it were tilted upward, there would be a greater range; internal sensors could provide information about walking speed, phone orientation, etc. I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t already built an app, though I haven’t checked.
Mary G
@OzarkHillbilly: You might get a kick out of this thread of rural liberals and their idea of what country songs should really be about:
Few of my favorites:
Steve in the ATL
@RSA: I guarantee huh that google has, and probably Apple as well. Or did you mean an app that users *know* is recording their movements?
OzarkHillbilly
@Martin: I want to apologize. My frustrations with chicken doors* has gotten my temper to a hair trigger.
*and every thing else techno .
8
mrmoshpotato
hehe
Brachiator
@Martin:
If you do a search for “chicken door,” Der Google says there are 445,000,000 results.
Top query under “People Also Ask” is the deeply existential query, “Do chickens need a door?”
Kirk Spencer
Cell phones are prohibited where I presently work without specific individual approval for both safety (lots of moving heavy equipment) and security (no photos of the proprietary goods please) reasons.
We lose people almost daily because they will try yet another method of smuggling in their phones. My second favorite right now is the individual who put their phone between two slices of bread in their lunchbox. My favorite was the fascinating new hairstyle some people tried to adopt.
Martin
@OzarkHillbilly: Sure, it’s not that hard. Which is why it’s usually a DIY project, and not something that GM would make.
The hardest part I would imagine is a sensor to ensure you don’t crush a chicken during closing. But otherwise a raspberrry pi, a relay, a feedback linear actuator, and a bit of code. This would be a good first semester engineering project. A bit overkill, but approachable.
No need to apologize. I know you’re a good guy. We all get frustrated.
Comrade Colette
@Kirk Spencer: Are there lockers or some kind of check-in location for phones, or are people supposed to leave them in their cars/at home?
Steve in the ATL
@Comrade Colette: have you watched “better call Saul”?
Comrade Colette
@Steve in the ATL: No. I’m a delicate flower and need to be sheltered from life’s harsh realities.
Actually, I’m just super-squeamish.
lowtechcyclist
regnaD kciN
NotMax
@Mary G
I Got Them Outhouse Splinters Blues
Clunky Junky Wi-fi
Ain’t No Hardscrabble Heaven
.
NotMax
@Martin
Sensor is easy peasy. Mandatory for automatic garage doors. In fact, shrinking down an entire garage door assembly almost must be something which someone, somewhere, has already come up with. Plug it into a timer. Voila.
Kirk Spencer
@Comrade Colette: Cars/at home.
And yes, we provide an emergency contact number that’s staffed and monitored.
Steve in the ATL
@Comrade Colette: there’s a plot line about a guy who thinks electricity makes him sick so everyone has to leave key fobs, watches, cell phones, etc. in the mailbox.
Kelly
Librarian I know broke both wrists reading while walking home. She lived 4 blocks from her library. We were neighbors and she had been doing it for many years. Worked until it didn’t.
satby
@Kirk Spencer: Not a very creative bunch that you work with. At the doctor’s office when the cell phones were prohibited two staffers switched to watch phones. Yeah, they got caught too.
Quiltingfool
When I was teaching, I was amazed at the teachers who spent quite a bit of time during the day on their cell phones. I never had time to do that! Managing a room of 8th graders, working on teaching stuff while they were working, grading, cleaning the lab room, setting up labs…well, you get the idea. Also, I had the old-fashioned concept that you should actually WORK during the work day; I had an obligation to the kids, their parents, and the people who paid my salary, the taxpayers. Shoot, I had more work to do than I had hours in the day. Any teachers out there? You know what I talking about!
Tehanu
@Spanky:
Maybe this device can find out where Ruth is.
lowtechcyclist
@Tehanu:
But I’m looking for the same old place!