Creepy wearable eyes make you look like a cyborg

Dr. Hirotaka Osawa from Japan’s Tsukuba University has developed a set of virtual eyes that masks your emotions and makes you look robotic. This technology will help people cope with situations when their facial expressions are judged incorrectly due to misinterpretation. Have you ever felt fantastic while the look in your eyes unintentionally appeared weary and your coworkers asked you why you looked sad? When intently concentrating on something, have you been accused of looking angry? That’s where Dr. Osawa’s AgencyGlasswearable technology comes in. Wearing these virtual eyes will make you always look approachable and attentive, no matter what the look on your face might actually be. On AgencyGlass’ website, Osawa stated that “this emotional support reduces a user's cognitive load for social manners,” making it easier to interact in an array of social situations.

AgencyGlass works in several different ways to mimic real-life eye movements. When you’re wearing the glasses, bodily movements like nodding your head will make the eyes blink. If you tilt your head back, the OLED display virtual eyes make you look like you’re taking a pensive moment to process information. These actions are enabled through the use of a gyroscope and an accelerometer that pick up on head movements. The onboard external camera senses motion and is able to detect faces. So even if you are happy but look sad, you’ll look content at all times when wearing these eyes.

It is interesting to observe the latest wearable cybernetic technology that makes us humans more robotically inclined.  And what’s kind of scary about the situation is that perhaps this technology will branch out and be able to provide emotional reinforcements for humans. Pretty soon, when stuff like this progresses, maybe humans will get computer chips implanted into their brains to help them make decisions and process information.

Story via spectrum.ieee.org, Gizmodo