The Doll Forum

The topic of robotics comes up a lot with dolls, animatronics and sound, but to me the one feature that alone could give the most life to a doll is moving eyes. Not just randomly roaming eyes, but eyes that can make eye contact and track you. Imagine making love to your doll and being able to really look into her eyes, as you move her eyes adjust and stay looking at you.

How? The electronics would be the easy part. There's a video (probably several) on YouTube of a desk lamp "looking" at a guy and moving as needed to keep looking at his face, it's powered by an Arduino so clearly it doesn't take much computing power to do. You could even have an algorithm so the eyes would switch which of your eyes they were looking at, have them move back and forth from time to time.

The mechanics would be the hard part. Not because moving eyes are all that complicated but because of noise. It would severely detract from the experience to hear gears grinding in her head.

Any ideas?

Artificial muscles come to mind but I don't know much about their capabilities. I have done the twisted fishing line muscle experiment, but I can't see you being able to make it like that. You'd probably have to engineer something like a real eye too, certainly beyond my capabilities.

Electromagnets maybe? Varying magnetic fields? Float the eye in a gel or something, similar to a real eye so there are no ball bearings or anything perhaps? That would probably require the owner to have to lubricate them. Actually, any moving eyes would probably require that.

I cant help you on the engineering but can pose a larger question.

How many doll owners would actually want that? I'm not sure I would. Of course to each their own but I'm a big believer in "be careful what you ask for."

It is an interesting idea. I would probably want to see the technology in action at an expo before I committed any money to purchasing this doll option though.

I vision the future doll eyes will be like semi transparent lcd screen with eye tracking camera inside, The screen will project image of the iris, pupils and even the veins simulating a real human eye. The projected image can be set to position as to follow you automatically by the aid of the eye tracking camera inside or set fixed at your desire from your smartphone. Since we already have smart watch and curved screen technology, this should not be that much a problem to do, and should not be too pricey too.

That would be much easier to engineer and could even adapt the pupil size to changing light conditions.

Oh displays in the eyes - that might give some creepy glowing eyes in the dark.
Well, that's something I definitely would not want to have.

Something like e-ink might give a more realistic look, but that's only black and white.

poppy

During play time, many doll users probably use low-light conditions to enhance the fantasy. If it had to go black and white in order to implement this option, it wouldn't be too terrible.

i would love to see doll eyes that can follow you. to me that would be a big jump in adding realism and separate it from being a lifeless doll.. possibly more so than even being able to speak. however the sound of motors whirring would kill the illusion just as quickly for me. the idea of magnets or floating in gels would seem more appealing but i have no idea how feasible that would be..

Next step is to upgrade software so she can cook dinner for you and all

I quite like the sexy gynoid thing, a few motor noises wouldnt bother me, The eyes could be simulated with lcd displays , as long as there was some eye movement I'm not sure I'd be to bothered it it tracked me. Opening and closing eyelids and the ability to make them flutter their eye lashes would be very sexy, not easy in engineering terms, maybe some fine shape memory alloy could be employed as eyelashes.

found this on youtube if you fancy a look about eye movement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgUfbHP4zZU

A common mistake you often see, same as in this video, they make the bottom eyelid move up to meet the top eyelid when the eye closes, so it closes in the middle, but that is not how the human eye closes though.

The top eyelid pretty much does all the work, the bottom eyelid only moves a very small amount.

On the subject, I would definitely want eyes that could track movement, it would be great for photography, if you could have the doll looking right at the camera, or to some other object.
Or if you walk up to her, that her eyes keep focused on you, because right now, you can align her eyes so they both look at you from a distance, but when you move closer, the eyes are too far apart. To be realistic, they should be able to go to the point of looking cross-eyed.

Good point on how human eyelids work.

Old-ish thread but what the hey....
I've been working on a project and stumbled across something called "muscle wire". The length shrinks when electricity is applied and re-lengthens when disconnected. It could easily be applied for side-to-side or up-and-down movement but a 360* movement would be more difficult.
Tracking would be arduino, yes, but where would we place the sensors? Tracking your person might be easy enough but to track your eyes, specifically, might be another thing.
Just some thoughts
-Wil

Oh for a stereoscopic view you need two eyes - that's the place for the sensors, a cam inside each eye. Cool design inspired from mother nature