Trinetra: Sensors for Sight

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Trinetra (The Third Eye)Virtual Sight for
the Visually Impaired
Priya Narasimhan Carnegie Mellon
University priya_at_cs.cmu.edu http//www.cs.cmu.ed
u/priya
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Motivation

• Conceived this project during last winter
• Started to think about a blind persons
  experiences needs in the winter
• Weather particularly treacherous and hard enough
  for sighted people
• Would be useful to have a way for blind people to
  see through strategic application of technology
• For traveling, navigation, day-to-day living,
• Looking to improve a blind persons quality of
  life in a cost-effective way
• Make current infrastructure more amenable and
  accessible to the blind

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Design Goals

• Understand a blind persons needs and the
  friendliness of specific technologies for the
  blind
• Not enough to involve a blind person after the
  fact, only in the final stage of project testing
  
• Need to involve a blind person from day one so
  that the design captures his/her needs
• Cost-effectiveness
• Technologies for assisting the blind are not
  commodity and not cheap
• If the solution has wider applicability (for
  business, sighted people, etc.), then, technology
  transition and adoption can become more feasible
• Independence for a blind person
• Ensure that a blind person can use/navigate this
  system without a sighted persons assistance
  this is a significant desire for a blind person

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Project Definition

• A blind person walking into Entropy needs
  assistance from the people behind the counter to
  find items in the store
• Blind person hesitant to bother a sighted
  person for assistance
• Robs a blind person of his/her independence
• Would be valuable for a blind person to be able
  to walk into Entropy and purchase items without
  any assistance
• Discussed this project with the Entropy
  management, who is excited to make this work and
  to see this in action

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Initial Target Entropy
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Issues and Challenges

• Granularity of identification
• Product, shelf, aisle, .
• Exploit existing infrastructure, e.g., barcodes?
• How effective if barcodes require line-of-sight
  scanning?
• What if barcodes are constantly changing? Require
  barcode DB?
• Look for vendors with RF tagging of products
• Not a pervasive or fully adopted technology, but
  likely to be
• Method of information delivery cellphone?
• User interface issues with information delivery
  for visual impairments
• Need a barcode/RF reader conversation into audio
  cellphone output
• Exploit Entropys inventory management
• Can make this more cost-effective for Entropy
• Exploit vendors eagerness to perform advertising
  at Entropy
• Sustainable infrastructure
• Minimal baby-sitting and long-lived (if indeed to
  be beneficial)

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Mentors

• Priya Narasimhan
• Faculty in ECE and CS
• Areas of expertise embedded systems, distributed
  systems, fault tolerance,
  middleware
• Passionate about ensuring that this project will
  actually help improve a blind persons quality of
  life
• Dan Rossi
• Oracle system administrator on campus
• Intended to be a key driver and user of this
  technology
• Knowledge of which technologies are likely to
  help/hinder the blind
• His participation will ensure that the project
  will be driven by a blind persons needs and
  viewpoint (instead of merely an after-the-fact
  testing by a blind subject)

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Summary

• Ultimate goal to exploit technology to assist the
  visually impaired with virtual sight
• Scoped course project
• Outfit Entropy with the ability for a blind
  person to navigate and purchase items of interest
• Outcome of course project
• Working prototype that is demonstrated to be
  effective (and cheap?)
• Dan Rossi (mentor) likely to use this technology
  if successful
• Serve as sustainable example of how technology
  can improve quality of life for blind people
• Building block for follow-on project next
  semester to outfit the CMU Shuttle
  Service with similar capabilities to benefit both
  sighted and blind people