Iris Eye Tracking Biometrics Camera

Tech gadgets are shifting toward intuitive operation and natural body movement control. Take, for example, multi-touch interfaces of tablets and smartphones and gesture control in game consoles like Microsoft Kinect. This natural user control is the inspiration behind a developing technology that uses eye tracking and biometrics to take photographs.

The Iris is a camera prototype created by Mimi Zou, a graduate from the Royal College of Art in Innovation Design Engineering, which uses eye tracking to enable the user to zoom in by squinting and zoom out by opening the eyes. All it takes is a double blink to snap a photograph. Rather than a traditional view finder or LCD screen, the surface has a digital display that shows the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings.

There are also proposed features which would use biometrics to make the camera even more dynamic. Not only could biometrics be used for security with iris scanning, but also for user identification so the camera could automatically adjust the focus to compensate for sight impairment. Another proposed biometric feature is facial recognition to identify subjects in the photographs. Who knows? In the future, maybe photos could automatically be posted to Facebook or Flickr from the Iris.

While this is just a concept camera, it does seem to have some pretty cool future applications. I imagine this kind of technology could eventually be integrated into a pair of eye tracking or augmented reality glasses to enable users to snap pics at the blink of an eye.

For more detail on the Iris project read: Futuristic Concept Camera Tracks Your Eye, Shoots When You Blink

Photo credit for the awesome pic used in this post.

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