[optacon-l] Re: Optacon research and development
- From: Seth Teller <teller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:49:40 -0500
All,
Thank you for your frank and thoughtful responses to our recent post
describing development of a high-resolution tactile display. It will
take us some time to absorb the dozens of messages we received both
on and off the list. In the interim here are a few brief comments
for the list; we will respond separately to those who wrote off-list.
First, we are developing a research prototype, not a product. Our
primary goal is to convey information about the user's surroundings
in tactile form; we are shooting for an existence proof, rather than
trying to meet particular design goals of weight, power usage, cost etc.
Those engineering refinements can come later, after the basic method
has been successfully demonstrated.
Second, as per the subject matter experts we have consulted -- blind
people who work at The Carroll Center, the Mass. Eye and Ear Institute,
MIT etc. -- our goal is enabling independent, private access to many
types of information from the extended surroundings, not just text and
graphics from a document on one's desktop or an object held in one's
hand. (However, as our original post noted, we are designing the
system to include an Optacon-like mode for those who want it.)
Third, we envision that users will gather information from the system
via the fingers of one or both hands in contact with its display. Our
reference to clothing was simply to suggest that the clothing would be
a natural means for unobtrusive integration of the sensors and computing
resources needed to actually produce and provide the information to the
display. Users unwilling to don such clothing could elect instead to
carry the required components, for example in a backpack, on a belt or
even as part of a hand-held device like a tablet or smartphone.
Fourth, regarding David's observation that a large display area might
dictate a lower resolution than could be achieved on a small display.
This is a great point; we will think about how to make a display with
higher resolution near the center and lower resolution near the edges,
like a biological retina. (David, as you anticipated, the answers to
your questions about size, shape, weight etc. are "too early to say.")
Finally, several people have mentioned GPS-based O&M applications. While
such applications exist, they are limited to outdoor operation in areas
for which accurate maps exist. We envision supporting safe O&M not only
in mapped, outdoor regions but also in unmapped indoor regions. This is
is possible in principle using sensors that capture both intensity and
depth information such as stereo cameras or lidar devices, as we have
shown in our peer-reviewed work on wearable indoor mapping systems (most
recently at the 2012 Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) conference,
see http://people.csail.mit.edu/teller/pubs/FallonEtAlIROS2012.pdf). As
for safety, both short and tall blind people have expressed to us their
desire for warnings of head hazards arising e.g. from tree branches and
other low objects, which neither GPS devices nor ordinary canes provide.
As before we welcome your comments, questions and suggestions.
Best,
Seth Teller
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering,
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
Principal Investigator,
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT Stata Center Room 32-333
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
Email: teller@xxxxxxx
Phone: 617-258-7885
http://people.csail.mit.edu/teller
Research overview: http://rvsn.csail.mit.edu
Intelligent wheelchair: http://rvsn.csail.mit.edu/wheelchair
Assistive Technology subject: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/PPAT
AT for the blind: http://people.csail.mit.edu/teller/misc/bocelli.html
Robotics subject: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.141
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