A South Korean industrial designer has come up with a satirical solution for “smartphone zombies” who cannot take their eyes away from their screen long enough to stop themselves walking into a wall or other obstacle.
Paeng Min-wook, 28, has developed a robotic eyeball he has dubbed “The Third Eye,” which obsessive mobile phone users can strap to their foreheads so they can browse injury-free on the go.
The device opens its translucent eyelid whenever it senses the user’s head has been lowered to look at a smartphone. When the user comes within 1m to 2m of an obstacle, the device beeps to warn of the impending danger.
Photo: Reuters
“This is the look of future mankind with three eyes,” Paeng, a postgraduate in innovation design engineering at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, said as he demonstrated use of The Third Eye around Seoul.
“As we cannot take our eyes off from smartphones, the extra eye will be needed in future,” he added.
Paeng’s invention uses a gyro sensor to measure the oblique angle of the user’s neck and an ultrasonic sensor to calculate the distance between the robotic eye and any obstacles. Both sensors are linked to an open-source single-board microcontroller, with battery pack.
Paeng’s demonstration of the device in Seoul this week garnered attention from passersby.
“I thought he looked like an alien with an eye on his forehead,” Seoul resident Lee Ok-jo said. “These days many young people can get into accidents while using their mobile phone. This would be good for them.”
Paeng said that The Third Eye was meant as a warning, not a real solution for smartphone addicts who do not pay attention to where they are going.
“By presenting this satirical solution, I hope people would recognize the severity of their gadget addiction and look back at themselves,” he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last