Meet Eyeborg. His real name is Rob Spence, and he has a video camera eye. After severely damaging his right eye as a child due to a shooting accident, he was left legally blind and found himself adapting to a new life without depth perception and peripheral vision. As time passed and 2007 came along, Spence’s right eye cornea deteriorated and began swelling to the point where he was told his eye would need to be replaced. Typically, one would acquire a glass eye to replace the damaged eye, but Spence instead choose to look into the possibility of a prosthetic eye with a video camera inside.
First partnering with Ocularist Phil Bowen who created a two-part prosthetic eye shell to house the electronic components, Rob then partnered with Engineer Kosta Grammatis to design the world’s first wireless camera inside a prosthetic eye.
With the help of a radio frequency, wireless design company, a small camera with a micro RF transmitter was custom built. Finally, electrical engineer Martin Ling designed a circuit board to connect a battery, camera and transmitter so that the prosthetic video camera eye could record and wirelessly transmit the broadcast to a receiver.
Already seeing the first signs of human and technology merging together, this brings up the question of what the possibilities and limits are to technological implants are and how it would drastically change how we think of ourselves as human beings. In an age of surveillance, cameras, and live streams, the eye camera would be another step towards a boundary of debate where an individual’s privacy ends and the right to record begins.
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