HoloLens used as wayfinding device to guide blind people through complex buildings

[FSogol]

Large, complex buildings can be difficult for anyone to navigate, but take away the benefit of sight and they can be downright impossible. But a solution may be on the horizon.

Recent prosthetic approaches to restore vision for the blind have attempted to convey raw images to the brain. These attempts have all suffered from the same problems, however: a lack of bandwidth and the extensive training required to interpret unusual stimuli.

This new approach, created by Researchers at the California Institute of Technology, takes an alternate approach that uses the Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality headset to restore vision at the cognitive level, bypassing the need to convey sensory data. The HoloLens is used to capture video and other data, extract the important scene knowledge, and convey that knowledge through auditory augmented reality.

The researchers say their design principle was to give sounds to all relevant objects in the environment. Each object in the scene can “talk” to the user with a voice that comes from the object’s location. As the object gets closer to the user, it’s pitch increases. The user has several modes of control to select which objects speak: Scan, Spotlight, and Target.

Whole article here:

https://www.bdcnetwork.com/hololens-used-wayfinding-device-guide-blind-people-through-complex-buildings?eid=240347864&bid=2123826

Video here (sorry, no way to embed)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v5Wdbi2WWXAMQXyLmVU6ogWDQfpyINQu/view

Very cool, imho

[DetlefK]

1. We can't get self-driving cars, but this is supposed to guide blind people down stairs. Sure.

This is so far out into the future, it's ridiculous.

Also, blind people are already using their ears to analyze the echoes that are actually coming from their environment. This thing would just clog up their senses.

[FSogol]

2. I dunno, the video looked convincing and you can turn the sound off in lieu of colored flashes for

directional help. Looks promising.