3-D Virtual Maps For the Blind 50
Roland Piquepaille writes to let us know about research into producing palpable maps for the blind. Scientific American has the story of Greek researchers who produce 3D "haptic" maps that "use force fields to represent walls and roads so the visually impaired can better understand the layout of buildings and cities." Two separate systems produce haptic output from standard video and from 2D maps. The systems have been tested on a small number of users. Currently the devices that interpret the "force fields" for sight-impaired users are not portable, and so the systems are most appropriate for doing research before, e.g., visiting a new city.
Re: (Score:1)
wonderful (Score:5, Insightful)
But the most important issue, and the one that makes this idea founder, is that mostly it's sighted folks implementing their ideas on what would make the world a better place for the blind. No blind person would likely find themselves wandering an unknown city without some assistance from either a guidedog or sighted assistant. Why? It's not the walls and what not that are the problem... its the idiots who park their cars on pavements, the morons who let their dogs foul the pavements, it's town planners who let trees grow over pavements putting overhanging branches in the way. And so on, and so on. Disrespect is one of the biggest barriers and something that cannot be easily resoved with 'force-fields'.
Sorry to rant, it's a nice idea...
taggers: "boycottroland" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Thats OK. You have just listed the things which piss me off more than practically anything else. I am not blind but the quality of my environment is important to me. Its a shame we have to invoke the needs of disabled people to get attention paid to things like this.
A good example
Re: (Score:1)
The cost of most attempted solutions to assist with blind living may be high, but I doubt that has nearly as much to do with extortion as it does with simply supply and demand.
I also fail to see how one can call poor planning a form of "disrespect". Or do you think that the city planners are twisting the tips of their upturned moustaches while
Re:wonderful (Score:5, Informative)
On the subject of visible assumptions, we have a blind guy doing some research into haptic interfaces as part of his PhD. Every so often the department gets the chance to try one of his experiments and the results are odd to say the least. As someone with sight I would assume that most information comes from shape and size, apparently these are secondary cues to the user of a haptic interface. I shouldn't really go into too many details as I'm not sure what he's published and what he hasn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Force Field: from a macroscopic perspective, the means by which a force communicates its influence; described by a collection of numbers at each point in space that reflect the strength and direction of the force at that point
This does not mean that any collection of numbers that describes
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
How is a blind person supposed to be able to use that weblets thing if they can't see the freaking buttons to activate it?
Not to mention that it has all the same flaws as a regular text reader in that it is next to impossible to use on a website made for sighted people. Even your own sales site shows off how crappy it is (e.g. Press the text resize buttons a few times and the whole page goes to shit; or if your mouse moves accidentally the thing starts reading some other part of the page). I realize that
Re: (Score:2)
You are audibly told to press F9 to switch on hotkeys. Then F12 to here a list of these keys. If you have cookies on you will only here this once (so as not to become annoying. If you were not sighted you would have waiting to here this.
"Not to mention that it has all the same flaws as a regular text reader in that it is next to impossible to use on a website made for sighted peop
Re: (Score:1)
I'm going to respond to your comment in reverse order because I want to get this out of the way first of all. I am not someone who thinks this technology is useless. I am aware of the fact that most of us (if we live long enough) at some point in our life will have vision impairment to some degree. In fact I'm probably more likely than most to have vision problems at some point in my life since I tend to spend most of my time in front of a monitor. I do think that text-to-speech is not the ideal solution. A
Re: (Score:2)
"That was basically my whole point. I'm not saying this script is entirely useless just that it really isn't anything new and offer
Golledge is blind. (Score:1)
Ehh? What's going on? (Score:5, Funny)
How long was I asleep?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Overflow from April 1st.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
It's the year 2012. There have also been two new releases of Debian [slashdot.org] :-)
is this useful? (Score:3, Funny)
Force feedback (Score:4, Interesting)
OK the only original idea in TFA is a force feedback glove which simulates touching a surface by pushing back against fingers at the appropriate moment. I can think of lots of uses for that if the device can be put into production.
The rest of it is all about building physical models of spaces, then taking pictures of them and turning the pictures into 3D models using an algorithm which the author is obviously very proud of. Unfortunately most people who design stuff these days build a 3D model in software at the outset, so going the other way is useful, but not the first thing I would think of.
Re: (Score:2)
Force Feedback is NOT a Force Field. (Score:1)
Good (Score:4, Funny)
"Feels like a couple of hills over here, maybe a park a bit lower, feels like some bushes...."
well... (Score:2)
Too large? (Score:1, Insightful)
Audio maps (Score:2)
Japan's being using "modern tech" for ages... (Score:2, Informative)
Not all that useful: (Score:1, Informative)
People who have been blind from birth almost always (there are some exceptions) find it immensely difficult to use maps or diagrams, even if they're very well made, with different textures and good labels. The problem seems to be that they can only really take in the
Re: (Score:1)