[optacon-l] Re: Questions about tactile displays and assistive devices for the blind
- From: Seth Teller <teller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 08 May 2011 16:03:19 -0400
Thanks to the many folks who responded on- and off-list with
suggestions, which I'll pursue. Thanks also to Dr. Bliss for
sharing his thoughtful writeup of design ideas. Clearly, there
is enthusiasm for revisiting the Optacon concept with updated
electronics, optics, etc., perhaps designed to support both
two-handed and one-handed use.
As noted in my original post, we are also developing a "general-
purpose" wearable assistive device to help with everyday tasks
beyond interpretation of text or graphical material. Suggestions
about which capabilities we should tackle first, or how you would
imagine interacting with such a device, would be much appreciated.
Best,
Seth Teller
On 5/6/2011 5:53 AM, Seth Teller wrote:
>
> Hello Optacon list members,
>
> My lab at MIT develops assistive technology. For some years we have
> worked with people with MS to develop robotic assistants. We have
> started to collaborate with blind people to develop a wearable device
> that will sense the wearer's surround (using color or depth cameras),
> interpret the sensor data (as obstacles, objects, hazards, text, people
> etc. or their attributes) and relay the interpreted data to the wearer
> via one or more channels (speech, spatialized sound, braille, or tactile
> display), using whatever channel(s) are appropriate to the current
> task, user context, and user preferences.
>
> We realize that it is critical to involve users in research from the
> very start, in order to understand their needs and increase the
> chance that any solutions we come up will actually be useful and used.
> Since this group includes many Optacon users, I'm writing to ask about
> your real-world experiences with tactile displays and your desires for
> assistive technology in general. (As background I found Harvey Lauer's
> 2003 essay on "The Reading Machine That Hasn't Been Built Yet," linked
> at http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw040204, quite powerful.)
>
> Anyway, here are a few questions to start:
>
> 1. People use the Optacon to read text, math symbols and engineering
> plots. For what sort of other pictorial representations do you use
> the device? How well does this work for you? Where or how does it fail?
>
> 2. The psychophysics literature cites spatial resolutions as fine as
> 40 microns (25 dots per millimeter) on the fingertips, but the spacing
> on the Optacon is much coarser than that. What spatial resolution do
> you want or need?
>
> 3. Can you imagine other methods beside vibration (e.g., variation in
> pin height) that would effectively convey information over an area?
>
> 4. Several blind people have asked us to develop a larger surface,
> perhaps the size of a smartphone or even an iPad, which could be felt
> with 4 or 8 (non-thumb) fingers simultaneously in order to "explore"
> the user's surround. If you had a larger device and wanted to use it
> in a mobile context, where would you place it on your body? On one of
> your forearms, to be felt with the other hand? On one hip? What about
> making small, light finger pads or a glove to keep a small part of the
> display surface in contact with each finger regardless of how your hands
> move? This would get in the way of direct touch sensing of other
> things (though in the long run, perhaps we could make the tactile array
> a kind of "pass-through" device). What do you think of these ideas?
>
> 5. In the long run, our goal is to support many activities in the home
> and out in the world: navigation, object finding, text-spotting and
> reading (e.g. from signs at a distance), people detection, reporting
> facial expressions, shopping, taxi hailing, etc. It's a much longer
> conversation, but: what are the capabilities you would want from such
> a device?
>
> Best,
>
> Seth Teller
>
> Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
> Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
> Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
> 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
>
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