WHATif - My GLASSES TAKE PICS when I BLINK?!

Welcome back everyone!

How are you all doing? I hope you are all well and safe! 

Before I get into the meat and bones of the blog, I just have to say, a massive THANK YOU to everyone who engaged with my last post! It was super successful and by far my most read piece! I'm so glad that it was useful to so many of you and I'm humbled by some of your testimonials! Please continue to share it, especially with anyone you know is interested in STEM and wants to do it in university (and currently in year 12/13).

And now to this post - those of you who have been with CRAETif for a long time know my obsession with how the brain works and being able to use it in technology. And I figured its been a minute since I sat down and designed a mini WHATif project for you guys. I really have missed this series, and I thought that as we are jumping back into the academic year, it would be a nice place for me to continue on and indulge my nerd tendencies. As normal, I will do my best to break everything down, even after the annotations. So here it goes!

(For my newbies, the WHATif series is a series where I come up with, plan and design a whacky yet cool piece of technology, and decompose the functionality behind how it would work. Preview some of my stuff, here, and here)

My latest WHATif is..

Glasses that take pics when you blink

(click on the image to enlarge it)

(And yes, I now draw on an ipad and have therefore transcended to a different realm because I am elite)

This is where I break everything down.

I have tried to colour code it in the image, so that all parts of the glasses' functionality are explained, but I can appreciate that my handwriting is not the neatest, and even with what is there, there is still more to be explained, so LEZGETIN2WIT!

THE LENSES (in yellow/orange)

These would be made of your normal glasses lens material (glass) with your normal prescription (i.e. how thiccccc 👀👀 or thin the glass needs to be for you to see properly). The only difference between my bAd bOYs and Specsavers is that these have a a thin, flexible and transparent image sensing film over the top of them. The functionality is better explained by this website, but to put it in brief, the film is doped (contains very small amounts of) fluorescent particles which absorb and re-emit the light incident on the film through it, and to the corners of the film, where there are micro optical sensor arrays on the edges. The polymer for this was formed in the Johannes Kepler University, and is very useful, as it doesn't require any additional circuity or electronics (other than image processing, which I get on to later). As a result, the device isn't heavy and clunky, or heavily power consuming.

NOSE AND FACE CONTACTS (in purple)

I will start with the nose contact. This is like those on any normal set of glasses (sit above your nose ridge ) except that mine will extend slightly higher, so that the contact is almost between the eyes and lies just under the Medial Palpebral Ligament. (I really dropped biology for a reason but whatever).

The outer contacts (near the handles of the glasses, also in purple) will make contact with the insertion Point (Lateral Palpebral Raphe). Both of these contacts are important as they will be useful in detecting when the person has blinked INTENTIONALLY. There are three different types of blinking: spontaneous (which you are doing now), reflex, and voluntary. The voluntary ones in particular are conspicious because of how many muscles you use, the length of time they are engaged, and the intensity of the pull. So the contacts will be made of silicone rubber and house mini pressure and motion sensors along their edges. Although they will be constantly detecting changes in pressure against the skin in these areas, a conspicuous large change in pressure, or prolonged length of time in motion will indicate that someone has blinked. This will probably make the glasses sit more like science goggles, but the contacts would be thin, so as to not be as clunky.

BRAINWAVE READER (in blue)

This will be headband that monitors the activity in the frontal eye field part of the frontal lobe(there is a brain pic below, you're welcome), the part responsible for motion in the muscles around the eyes. Increased activity in this region is to be expected when one blinks, and especially when the blinks are voluntary. Research linked *here* explains very eloquently why that is, but again as simply as possible, voluntary blinks are controlled by a set of nerves in the frontal lobe (specifically the frontal eye fields) and when they are in action, they emit signals within the frequency of 8-13 Hz (8 to 13 times a second), making them alpha waves. The intensity of those signals is greatest when voluntarily blinking too, and will occur over a time of 600ms. This information, along with the movement and pressure change detected by contacts, will be useful to coordinate a response to a blink.

I would most likely not be making the headset as it would require specialist technology that I do not have, although if you want to see my attempts, click here.

COMBINED FUNCTIONALITY OF THE ABOVE COMPONENTS

Although I haven't drawn it in, the junction where the headband connects with the handles would contain a miniature chip with an ADC (analogue to digital converter, which simply means it converts raw input like electrical wave forms to a digital signal), which receives the information from the headset and the pressure/motion sensors. 

1. There would be brain activity that would occur microseconds before the muscle activity, and both would feed back to this chip. 

2. The chip detects whether they are both at a significant enough level to determine that the person blinked

3. If the answer is yes, the readings of the optical sensor arrays around the lens would be captured, information on light intensity converted to a digital form and sent on a thin wire inside the handles to mini Bluetooth emitters on the edge of the handles, which are connected to the phone

4. In the phone, the data from the left lens and right lens are processed and combined in specialist software to form an image.

HANDLES + CHARGING

I haven't gone into too much depth about the glasses handles as the pic explains it pretty well, but I will explain a little bit more about the charging and the glasses string. The glasses string (I think it's called that) will contain a wire that connects the power source - a 3V cell contained within the open and closing switch - to the rest of the glasses. It is drawn in the main diagram, but in pink.

THINGS TO CONSIDER

I can't lie, I felt kind...cool 🙈...I guess, when I came up with how this would all work, but this is not without its draw backs:

• The image would be in greyscale

Yeah... that's kinda peak. This is due to the limited functionality of the light sensing film at present, there is not an option for this to be in colour (although I am sure that if they were able to develop optical sensors that converted not just intensity but wavelength then it would be possible to distinguish colour too, not just shade). But if you don't mind the 1820 vibes then its all good.

• Weight

My design operates off the assumption that I m able to find all the electronic components in their smallest and most sensitive forms, but if this is not the case then the thing gets pretty clunky and uncomfortable.

• Usage

There is no way to censor how people would use such glasses if they ever existed, and they could potentially be used to take pictures of what people don't have permission to.

• Did you blink, or did you just move your eyes violently ?

The same muscles involved in blinking would be involved in moving your eyes left and right and up and down, so there could always be confusion with the sensors there. However, this is hopefully mitigated by the brain wave detector, which would pick up brainwaves expressly from when signals are sent to your eyelids to close for a blink.

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That's all for today folks! I have enjoyed working on this so much, and I cant wait to be back with another one! Please don't forget to subscribe (top right hand corner when you scroll up) and share! What do you want to see next? Let me know in the comments, and tell me what you think, respectfully :)

Take care everyone!

EO