Employing laptop imaginative and prescient methods, college students from the
Ramaiah Institute of Technology’s IEEE Computational Intelligence Society chapter in Bangalore, India, developed a tool to help people who find themselves visually impaired. OurVision is a low-cost wearable that reads textual content out loud to customers and helps them navigate their environment. The aim is to assist blind folks advance their instructional and profession alternatives, in addition to to assist them reside independently. The expertise used within the machine consists of optical character recognition, machine studying, and Google software programming interfaces.
The IEEE CIS chapter acquired a US $4,400 grant for the mission from
EPICS in IEEE, made attainable by way of beneficiant donors and a partnership with the IEEE Foundation. The scholar group was in a position to take an concept and switch it right into a working answer whereas working hand in hand with a neighborhood accomplice, the National Association for the Blind (NAB) in Karnataka, India.
“With this device, visually impaired individuals can read and move around independently like their non-blind peers,” says the mission lead, school member
Megha Arakeri, an IEEE member.
An illustration of how the OurVision wearable works.EPICS in IEEE
The means to learn underneath any situation and navigate environment
OurVision can learn textual content out loud from books and periodicals in addition to billboards, posters, and visitors indicators. It can translate textual content in a wide range of languages together with English, Kannada, Telagu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi.
The transportable machine helps the consumer learn in nearly any location and lighting circumstances. If the machine can’t learn textual content as a result of the consumer isn’t holding the e book or different doc appropriately, OurVision verbally notifies the consumer the alignment is off. In addition, it assists the particular person in navigating the environment by describing close by objects and their distance from the consumer.
The assistive machine works with or with out Wi-Fi.
“With this device, visually impaired individuals can read and move around independently like their non-blind peers.”
The group constructed 11 gadgets, which at present are saved within the NAB library. Users should signal them out. Approximately 100 college students affiliated with the NAB are utilizing OneVision. The group labored intently with the group.
The estimated worth of the machine is US $206 (17,000 rupees).
“The visually challenged students who are using it for their studies and navigation purposes have provided good feedback on the efficiency and portability of the device compared to others that they have used in the past,” says Latha Kumari, NAB mobility officer. “In order to provide this benefit to a greater number of visually impaired students, we are looking forward to collaborating with the professor and student team to develop more devices with enhanced features based on the feedback from the students. We highly appreciate and commend the efforts of Professor Arakeri and students.”
The machine has not been launched to the market but. The group first plans so as to add options equivalent to forex recognition, in addition to the power to acknowledge colours.
Learning outcomes from the design and improvement course of
Students from the IEEE CIS scholar chapter say they discovered an excellent deal throughout the mission’s design, improvement, and deployment. They additionally educated M.S. Ramaiah High School college students within the design course of and provides them expertise in making a technical answer for a neighborhood in want.
“The project provided me with the opportunity to apply my engineering skills to product development,” one member of the group says. “The development process involved different stakeholders, a nongovernmental organization, and high school students—which allowed for sharing experiences and feedback.”
The EPICS in IEEE mentor assigned to the mission was Ruby Annette Jayaseela Dhanaraj, an AI researcher and machine studying engineer at Matilda Cloud, in Richardson, Texas.
“The students have made a great effort, and are thoroughly knowledgeable about the technology being used,” Jayaseela Dhanaraj says, including that they “are excited to make the product even better.”
“I cherished this mentoring experience,” she says. “I am very glad that I could contribute to the technology that could impact the lives of many blind students.”
Visit the EPICS in IEEE web site to study different initiatives and future proposal deadlines. To assist future initiatives, donate right here.
This article is an edited excerpt of the “EPICS in IEEE Team Completes and Deploys Assistive Device to Blind Students in Bangalore, India” weblog entry printed in May.
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