News Section | Neurobiology
‘Cyborg’ filmmaker turns his prosthetic eye into video camera
A Canadian documentary filmmaker, who lost his eye in a childhood shooting accident, has turned his prosthetic eye into a miniature video camera.
Rob Spence, from Toronto, is able to record what he sees through his other eye.
The device crams a video camera, wireless transmitter and battery inside Spence’s empty eye socket. The “eyeborg” then transmits a video signal to a handheld screen.
A fan of the 1970s television series ‘The Six Million Dollar Man,’ Spence said he had an epiphany when looking at his mobile phone camera and realising something that small could fit into his empty eye socket.
OmniVision, a California-based company that specializes in the miniature cameras found in cell phones, laptops and endoscopes, donated a tiny camera, just 3.2mm squared. It had a resolution of 328x250pixels.
They used a battery from Powerstream, which supplied batteries to ultra-light remote-controlled helicopters and measured just 5x9x10mm. They also included a wireless transmitter.
It was all connected together via a printed circuit board that had the same thickness as a piece of paper.
“It wasn’t easy, but because it’s so like pop fiction, engineers had a lot of fun making it – without a budget I was able to do it – it was a fun project for these guys,” the Daily Mail quoted Spence as telling Sky News.
Spence also has a version with a red LED light in the eye, so that he resembles the famous film cyborg the ‘Terminator’.
The documentary maker is keen to use his eye for a project called Eye 4 an Eye, which will explore privacy issues and whether people are “sleepwalking into an Orwellian society”.
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