Robot Sensing and Smartphones to Help Blind Navigate From: New Scientist - 05/01/2012 By: Helen Knight Edwige Pissaloux and colleagues at Pierre and Marie Curie University's Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics have developed technology that could eventually let blind users navigate their surroundings without assistance. The system features glasses outfitted with cameras and sensors like those employed in robot exploration, and it generates a three-dimensional map of the user's environment and their position in it, which is continuously updated and displayed on a handheld electronic Braille device. The system produces nearly 10 maps each second, which are transmitted to the Braille device and displayed as a dynamic tactile map. Pissaloux says the Braille map's update speed is sufficient for a visually impaired wearer to navigate an area at walking speed. Other robotics technology being applied to help the visually impaired includes software that predicts how far a robot has traveled according to on-board sensor data, which is being tweaked to track a person's movements based on the length of their stride. The system, under development by researchers at the University of Nevada in Reno, would help blind users walk around buildings with the help of a smartphone, using freely available two-dimensional digital indoor maps and a built-in accelerometer and compass. Synthetic speech would provide directions. Read the entire article at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428625.700-robot-sensing-and-smartphones-help-blind-navigate.html Links: Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics http://www.isir.upmc.fr/?op=view_profil&id=25&lang=en Smart glasses producing 3D braille maps could help blind people navigate the world http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/2/2993311/blind-navigation-glasses-braille-ISIR-pissaloux Related: Kinect gives NSK robotic guide dog sight (with video 2:00) http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/5/2539703/nsk-guide-dog-robot-kinect-blind