Smart Glasses Help the Blind Navigate

Smart glasses that use visual object recognition and text-to-speech technologies could soon help blind people navigate independently.

Many people registered as blind or partially-sighted retain some ability to detect light and motion. By making use of their remaining vision, Stephen Hicks and his team at the University of Oxford hope to increase the blind’s ability to navigate independently and avoid obstacles. Their project, called Assisted Vision , is developing a pair of glasses that collects visual information using sensors and relays it back to the wearer using OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screens and headphones.

The glasses use two cameras to create the effect of stereoscopic vision and to determine the distances to objects. A gyroscope indicates the movement of the wearer, while a compass determines the wearer’s direction. The glasses also include a small GPS tracker which provides the wearer’s exact location.

The information is processed using various techniques. Depth is indicated on the screen using brightness, such that the closer an object is the brighter it appears. The cameras collect subsequent images to determine whether objects are static or moving. While gyroscopic information indicates the movement of the user, which in-turn helps to distinguish between objects that appear to move because of the user’s movement and objects that are actually moving.

The processed information is displayed on a set of transparent OLED screens and overlaid on the wearer’s regular vision. This design not only enhances what a user sees, but also gives the glasses a relatively normal appearance. At the same time, the headphones use text-to-speech software to provide spoken assistance, which can be used in conjunction with the GPS to dictate navigation instructions.

The project has also focused on making the glasses as accessible as possible. For one, the glasses don’t require any surgery or special training to use. They also use off-the-shelf products, such as USB webcams and the Microsoft Kinect, to keep the product inexpensive.

The Assisted Vision team isn’t done yet. In recognition of their original work, the Assisted Vision project was recently awarded the Royal Society’s Brian Mercer Award for Innovation ; which should allow them to add even more features, and hopefully prepare a market-ready product.

Images and Video Source: Assisted Vision