Our photo director, Jim Merithew, once said that he hates cameras — he just wants to blink to take a picture with his eyes. Now he can.
A new camera concept, called Iris, aims to use eye-tracking technology and biometric detection to provide an impressively frictionless device for taking photos.
“When we are learning to use a camera we are really training ourselves to adapt to the product, and I believe it should also be the other way around,†says Mimi Zou, a 24-year-old American and recent graduate in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art in London. “Products should be more intelligent and they should have the ability to also adapt to us.â€
With Iris, eye-tracking controls all the mechanics of the camera. To make the camera zoom in you squint slightly. To make it zoom out you open your eyes. And to fire the shutter you hold your gaze and blink twice. At the moment, Zou says she has a working prototype, but that camera still mimics the mechanics through its software.