Hacking kinect
IF you are really smart in tech, creative and want to solve real problem for people, u can find out that building product or tech will not cost you a fortune.
In 2011 several different groups of people were prototyping navigation assistant for visually impaired people using hacked xbox kinect.
Kinect is using infrared sensors to detect motion and distance to objects.
You can read more on how it works http://www.jameco.com/jameco/workshop/howitworks/xboxkinect.html.
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And this tech appeared to be real handy to detect obstacles for blind people, all u need some computer to track the information and signaling system to warn the user.
Audio channel is not the best way to inform blind people during the navigation. In this case the whole sense is used for just one task, and people are loosing the way to get more info on surroundings, which really is creating more problems then solving.
So one talented team of enthusiasts went even further with kinect concept and have created Belly-mounted tactile matrix to worn user about approaching obstacles.
“Each tactile pixel is disassembled electromagnetic relay much like this with a curved paper-clip attached. Voltage is applied periodically so that pixel prods person several times a second. The more frequency is, the closer is the object under that pixel. Depth perception made that way is not very accurate, but even non-trained person could easily distinguish ‘very close’ from ‘about one meter’ from ‘about three metres’.”
Project won second place at Russian Imagine Cup at 2011.
More info on these projects:
http://hci.uni-konstanz.de/blog/2011/03/15/navi/?lang=en
http://www.zoneos.com/kinectfortheblind.htm
