Engineer Designs Software That Could Help Blind Feel Surrounding With a 3D Camera And a Glove

A Venezuelan engineer has designed a prototype software that would allow the blind to perceive the constituent elements of the environment without having to touch them.

The software would leverage a 3D camera, sticked in front of the person, and a glove that issues vibrations to the fingers when the object is near in order to facilitate its position, spatial distribution and size.

Carlos Díaz, of Simon Fraser University in Canada, used Kinect, system developed by Microsoft which helps users control and interact with the videogame console without the need of physical contact. The interface of the Kinect can recognize gestures, voice/sounds and movements of objects of images.

Díaz explained that a computer processes the images captured by the 3D camera and creates a tridimensional model of the objects. For its part, a 2D camera records the position of the glove fingers, and the glove vibrates when the user touches the virtual models, EL Universal reported.

"Users have a scanning space which can be touched, interact with and virtually penetrate the bodies, learning to perceive, locate, measure, count and distinguish them," Díaz elaborated. The purpose, he added, is to make people wear a helmet when walking and perceive with their hands, by means of vibrations, a tactile image of the surroundings.