Collaborate Disseminate
Manufactured by Austrian startup Tec-Innovation, the InnoMake shoe uses ultrasound sensors to warn blind users of obstacles in their path. The footwear may soon become even more capable, though, thanks to integrated cameras.Continue ReadingCategory: We… Continue reading “Seeing-eye shoes” for the blind to be enhanced with onboard cameras
Autonomous vehicles and robots use elaborate suites of sensors and cameras to make sense of their surroundings – but visually-impaired people still get by with canes and guide dogs. Now, engineers have developed a voice-activated wearable system that c… Continue reading Backpack AI system helps the visually-impaired navigate safely
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a debilitating condition that can lead to total blindness in its later stages. Now, researchers have created a new potential treatment for the currently incurable disease – a biohybrid artificial retina, made o… Continue reading Biohybrid artificial retina aims to restore vision using living cells
In some forms of blindness, certain parts of the eye still work but damage to light-sensitive cells disrupts vision. Now, researchers at a company called Nanoscope have used gene therapy to bypass damaged cells and restore some level of vision to mice … Continue reading Gene therapy restores partial vision to totally blind mice
Guide dogs play an important role as a mobility aid for the visually impaired, but they aren’t the perfect solution for everyone. Things like the cost, smaller living quarters or even allergies can mean that these canines aren’t suitable for many, but … Continue reading Mobility device for the blind works like a handheld robotic guide dog
For people who rely on Braille, reading displays and signs in public can be a challenge, but a new system could help make things easier. HaptiRead is a haptic feedback device that uses ultrasound pulses in precise patterns to reproduce Braille text in … Continue reading Ultrasound haptic system projects readable Braille into thin air
[Jakob Kilian] is working on a glove that he hopes will let the blind “see” their surroundings.
One of the most fascinating examples of the human brain’s plasticity is in its ability to map one sense to another. Some people, for example, report being able to see sound, giving them …read more
Continue reading Giving Sight to the Blind with A Wave of the Hand
If you have a serious visual impairment, using a computer isn’t easy. [Dhiraj] has a project that allows people fluent in Braille to use that language for input. In addition to having a set position for fingers, the device also reads the key pressed as you type. With some third …read more
Head-mounted displays range from cumbersome to glass-hole-ish. Smart watches have their niche, but they still take your eyes away from whatever you are doing, like driving. Voice assistants can read to you, but they require a speaker that everyone else in the car has to listen to, or a headset that blocks out important sound. Ignoring incoming messages is out of the question so the answer may be to use a different sense than vision. A joint project between Facebook Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a solution which uses the somatosensory reception of your forearm.
A similar …read more
Signing up for college classes can be intimidating, from tuition, textbook requirements, to finding an engaging professor. Imagine signing up online, but you cannot use your monitor. We wager that roughly ninety-nine percent of the hackers reading this article have it displayed on a tablet, phone, or computer monitor. Conversely, “Only one percent of published books is available in Braille,” according to [Kristina Tsvetanova] who has created a hybrid tablet computer with a Braille display next to a touch-screen tablet running Android. The tablet accepts voice commands for launching apps, a feature baked right into Android. The idea came to …read more