Sensory Aid for the Blind and Visually Impaired

I am developing a sensory aid for the blind and visually impaired.

Publications

A paper entitled “Design of a Sonar System for Visually Impaired Humans” was published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display in 2008. The poster I presented is also available. I presented a poster designed for a general audience describing this work at the CIMIT Innovation Congress in 2007.

Demos

MPEG-4 movies of the device are available, using clicks and tones to ensonify the environment. Another movie shows where I was pointing the device while exploring the top and bottom edges of a cardboard target (the emitter points near the top of the image frame).

The following image is formed of a series of recordings taken using the device in different directions in a typical room. The image is analogous to a radar screen. For each line, we point the device in that direction, make a recording of one click, then proceed to the next direction. It would sound like this MP3 file if one were seated in the centre of the room facing right, and panned to the left 180° then back to the right. A movie of the graph, with a dot indicating the direction of the head, is here. (Try listening with it set to loop. Use earphones.)