I know these final year projects of B.sc students sound impressive, but this
is another classic sightling trying to work out something from his
perspective of blind, rather than asking the blind end user. Clive sinclair
tried this method, I ahve a good idea, you will buy it.... and they
didn't. To be fair, he tried again with a computer, and they did buy that,
and the snapon keyboard to work it.
I know I sound cynical, But the description is trying to make out he's
going from 1920s technology to spaceage technology at a stroke; he isn't,
we got so many gps and map and navigation systems here now, for the sake of
the iPhone to run them. So the shoe gismo is an interesting tangent, but
Heck!.... he's not invading rocket science territory with it for sure.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Olver" <goodfo...@charter.net>
To: <viphone@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2012 4:25 PM
Subject: Shoes, anyone?
Footwear for the blind
Bluetooth shoes
Jul 14th 2012
MORE than 285m people across the globe suffer from visual impairment.
Yet the tools to assist the blind in walking have changed little since
the 1920s,
when their canes started being painted white to make other pedestrians
more aware of their presence. The gizmos that do exist have tended to
be expensive
and clunky, and have not caught on. This may change if Anirudh Sharma,
a 24-year-old computer engineer from Hyderabad, a city in the Indian
state of Andhra
Pradesh, has his way.
His innovation, dubbed "Le Chal" ("take me along" in Hindi) pairs a
smartphone app with a small actuator sewn inside the sole of one shoe
via Bluetooth.
The user tells the phone his desired destination, which is translated
into electronic commands using voice-recognition software. The app,
which can be
programmed to run in the background, fetches the local map of the area.
The phone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) tracks the person’s
location in real-time,
telling the actuator to vibrate when it is time to turn. The side of
the shoe where the vibration is felt indicates which way to go. Mr
Sharma opted for
a vibrating signal because for the blind, who rely on their sense of
hearing to make sense of the environment, audio feedback is a distraction.
The system does not require constant internet access. Once downloaded,
maps can be stored locally and combined with GPS data. The app uses
Open Street Maps
(OSM), an open-source rival to Google Maps. OSM allows editing, a
helpful feature in updating rapidly changing urban landscapes. A
speed-dial function
can rapidly retrieve the most frequently visited routes.
The shoe pod is also equipped with an obstacle-detection mechanism. A
sensor in the tip of the shoe, devised by Mr Sharma’s business
partner, Krispian Lawrence,
scans the vicinity using sonar, which emits ultrasounds that bounce off
obstacles, indicating their presence. The shoe sets off a distinct
pattern of vibrations
to alert the person of any obstruction and guides him around it.
For now, the footwear, being tested at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute,
one of India’s biggest eye-health facilities, may be most useful in
areas with little
or no traffic, such as quiet residential streets or parks. The
challenge, Mr Lawrence says, is to get the algorithm to tell an
uncovered manhole from a
flight of stairs, but he expects it to be able to do so in due course.
Dealing with moving obstacles like cars may take longer, though the
pair are working
on ways to alert wearers not just about cars' presence, but also their
speed.
To ensure that the final product resembles a regular shoe, fashion
technologists are being consulted to help with ergonomics and design.
Mr Sharma and Mr
Lawrence, who started a company called Ducere Technologies to
commercialise their idea, say their high-tech brogues should not cost
more than an ordinary,
stylish pair. Many of the world's visually impaired will like the sound
of that.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/07/footwear-blind?fsrc=scn/tw/te
/bl/bluetoothshoes#_methods=onPlusOne%2C_ready%2C_close%2C_open
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