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Every once in a while you see the invention, which seems to wait for a long time. A secret hand-mounted system that pings around and passes the information for the user, is one of those. Although reliable white cane and separate premises for blind and vision impaired to mitigate the difficulties of transition in the world without sight, technological innovations, which are useful and ready for deployment are extremely rare.
We've seen a lot of research in artificial vision systems, and people often personally with both vision, or mobility hacked together projects — we've seen Kinect-powered navigation system, Eyewriter and Ken Yankelvitz paralysis of available controllers. This project is an example of it's amazing what one guy can do with a soldering iron, finished parts and inventive mind.
The system uses two Ultrasonic sensors, which can be found at the distance of objects between 2 cm and 3 m. Facing off on the right and left, they can be swept across the room and will have the opportunity to experience the most common obstacles and dangerous objects. They send a signal through the Arduino Mini, which regulates a pair of servos. These servos to cycle the foam on the wrist: the closer the object is, the harder they insist. All this is powered by a 9V battery and straps on either hand.
Projects like this are the reason we have the patent system. Although tech companies filing thousands of patents on trivial UI elements and software techniques, inventor, Steve Hoefer, instead decided to give away his invention for free under a Creative Commons license. As more and more common with interesting hacked inventions like this, he published a list of parts, detailed instructions, circuit diagram and source code for the Arduino controller.
Hoefer says the system has a learning curve "seconds", and I don't see why this is so. Nothing is naturally intuitive; All told, even the vision and our conceptions of space and navigation. On the basis of the manual tactile feedback-many blind people have grown up with and add this additional information, while the first foreign, will likely be welcomed as very useful. They also proved to be very able to synthesize such information into a cohesive mental map — sometimes spectacularly so.
There are some other projects haptic vision as HALO system — but it seems more practical to me. Extensive hand mimics the way the eye and unlike head-mounted system, this can be used, say, find a pen on the table. Low cost can be easily constructed and made a part of the overall assistance, unlike a fascinating but expensive and impractical (for now) tour as the vision substitution.
It's always nice to see the real inventors invent real things and for any other reason, the problem must be resolved.
[via hack a day]
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