Papillon
Expressive eyes for interactive characters
»Papillon« is a technology for 3D printing highly expressive animated eyes for interactive characters, robots and toys. Expressive eyes are essential in any form of face-to-face communication and designing them has been a critical challenge in robotics, as well as in interactive character and toy development.
»Papillon« is a project of the interaction group at Disney Research Pittsburgh.
To allow the design of highly expressive eyes, the »Papillon« uses a printed optics technology where eyes are designed as a bundle of 3D printed optical fibers guiding images projected on the receiving end of the bundle to the surfaces of the character eye.
I joined the project team to design the animation of the eyes for the e-tech demo at SIGGRAPH 2013 in Anaheim.