Engineering provides countless opportunities to improve the lives of people in one’s community and around the world.
This was the aim of an engineering student at Rutgers University who developed a way to create sophisticated Braille maps using a 3D printer. The three plastic, tactile maps contain floor plans and Braille labels for each floor of the Joseph Kohn Training Center, a state-funded facility for the blind and visually impaired.
The project was a joint effort between senior mechanical engineering student Jason Kim and professor Howon Lee from the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering in Rutgers’ School of Engineering.
Kim said he approached professor Lee last spring, looking for a summer engineering project he could take on to help the community.
“I had just learned how to use SOLIDWORKS [3D modeling computer-aided design software] and so this summer project would be a great way to exercise a skill I had just acquired, just for the community,” Kim said. “[Lee] told me about this opportunity and I thought it was perfect.”
Lee launched the project and Kim jumped in. Neither knew anything about braille, so they had a steep learning curve.
They visited the training center several times to get feedback from faculty and students and finished designing the map near the end of last summer.
A portable and durable 3D-printed tactile map with braille for the Joseph Kohn Training Center in New Brunswick. (Image courtesy of Cameron Bowman/Rutgers University.)
“One of the things we saw with conventional braille printed on paper is that it doesn’t last long,” Lee said. But the plastic maps are much more durable, and offer a lot of detail thanks to the printing method.
“Instead of printing letters on top of a 2-dimensional sheet, you just do this over and over again, layer upon layer, until you have a final 3-dimensional product,” Lee added.
The new maps are a little larger than the dimensions of a small computer tablet, and are gathered in a binder so students can easily carry them for reference.
The maps also have a legend, or guide, in braille, a feature missing from previous iterations. This legend helps limit the amount of training needed to learn how to read and navigate the maps.
Currently, Lee said, there is only one copy of the set of maps. The goal, however, is to lower the cost for making these maps so that every student in the centre can get a map on their first day.
Lee describes the maps as “a form of GPS for the blind and visually impaired.”
Staff at the training center have lauded the durable plastic maps as an excellent replacement for the center’s current system of old wooden maps with a few Braille labels on the walls throughout the building.
Engineering student Jason Kim and Howon Lee, assistant professor in Rutgers' department of Mechanical and aerospace engineering, holding their 3D-printed tactile map with braille. (Image courtesy of Cameron Bowman/Rutgers University.)
For the future, Lee said he is interested in developing more 3D maps for the Rutgers’ campuses and even the city of New Brunswick itself. The idea is to “give freedom, extended freedom, to navigate and go from one place to another without worrying too much,” Lee said.
“It was a very fulfilling experience,” said Kim. “I learned a lot. The most difficult part was trying to imagine what it would be like to be blind myself so I could better tackle the problem, and it opened my eyes to the whole visually impaired and blind community.”
Visit the Rutgers’ School of Engineering for more information.