THE NEW BRAILLE READING -WRITING MACHINE THE PIONEER MACHINE FOR READING AND WRITING USING BRAILLE SYSTEM

Project Team Amr S.Khayyat Isam Zareefa Fathi Abu Saleh Mahdi Eshtayya Supervisor Dr. Bashir M. Y. NOURi Chief Of Mechanical Engineering Department An-Najah National University

Presentation’s Outline - Blindness - Braille Language - The Idea Behind The Machine - Design Strategy

Blindness Blindness is the condition of lacking due to visual perception, physiological or neurological factors. In the world, every five seconds a person becomes blind, every 5 minutes a child becomes blind. This ended up in a total of 45 millions blind people around the world. Sadly, this number is estimated to reach 75 million in 2020. In addition, there are 135 million people nowadays with low vision.

Causes of Blindness Diseases Cataracts Most visual impairment is caused by disease and malnutrition. According to an estimation in 2002, the most common causes of blindness around the world are: Cataracts A cataract is a clouding that develops in the crystalline lens of the eye or in its envelope, varying in degree from slight to complete opacity and obstructing the passage of light. Cataracts Disease

Treatment Glaucoma Diabetic Retinopathy Cataract Surgery Laser Surgery Glaucoma refers to a group of diseases that affect the optic nerve and involves a loss of retinal ganglion cells in a characteristic pattern. Diabetic Retinopathy Diabetic retinopathy is retinopathy (damage to the retina) caused by complications of diabetes mellitus, which can eventually lead to blindness. Treatment Treatments and procedures that are commonly used to treat Blindness & Visual Impairment are listed as follows. Cataract Surgery Laser Surgery Psychotherapy Surgery New Drugs

Braille Language The improbable chain of circumstance that would give birth to Braille began after King Louis the Ninth of France suffered a crushing defeat in the Sixth Crusade. Already a religious man, Louis returned to Paris certain that God was making him suffer to teach him humility, which intensified his interest in charity. Braille is used by people who are blind or visually impaired to write and read words. It is a code of raised dots formed by "cells" of up to six raised dots arranged in two parallel rows of three. A cell can represent a letter of the alphabet, number, punctuation mark or entire word, and a blind person reads these raised dots by running her fingertips over them.

Braille Cell Braille generally consists of cells of six raised dots arranged in a grid of two dots horizontally by three dots vertically. The dots are conventionally numbered 1, 2, and 3 from the top of the left column and 4, 5, and 6 from the top of the right column Braille Cell

American Standards(mm) Braille Cell Dimensions   Dimensions Symbols a b c d e American Standards(mm) 2.5 6.25 10.0 0.5

Tutorial Examples Full stop Comma

The Idea Behind The machine The main benefits of our machine will go to blind people who had a problems in their eyes in advance level of their life, that mean after they was read and write normally. Mr. Samir Abu Al-Rub who is the owner of the idea, he became blind after 38 years old because of diabetes. He told us while we visit Al-Noor School which he teach in, about many problems that he was faced in learning Braille language, the difficulty in touching, because the touch sense it is not sensitive to a small height in a paper, and there are many other difficulties.

Once upon the time, a blind student came to the school, his name is Sanad Nassar, he have a low vision in his eyes and the teacher was faced a lot of difficulties when he was teaching him. The same reason of the problem that we have mentioned and the difficulty to learn writing. This student was encouraged, this student inspire Mr. Abu Al-Rub to think about a method to enlarge the Braille dots and to light them so the blind students and students with low-vision will be able to read and write through them, then he reached to create a wooden board containing holes with screws describing the raised dots as in Braille language. Mr. Samir Abu Al-Rub

Mr. Abu Al-Rub did not hesitate to participate in the contest "important of Palestine." and he won the prize without any thinking because of it’s importance. Because of the huge humanity that this idea involved, it must be developed to reach all the blind around the world. Mr. Abu Al-Rub began a development campaign to find a society, charity to incubate his idea, and no one give him the opportunity. The search going on until he went to the mechanical engineering department in An-Najah National University and met our respected Professor Dr. Bashir Nouri who was very interested in the idea and give that opportunity to us to build this machine for help all blind people around the world.

Design Strategy The Unit Cell Design The Braille alphabets have a standard shape, as we know each alphabet describing by a six perforation dots lined up alongside each other to represent the Braille alphabet 5 cm 7 cm

The Pin Design Regarding to the pin which represent the key of this project, we have designed all the pins to give the best shape and movement without any difficulties when the blind people use this machine. The pin was designed in the form of (T) shape, to prevent it from exit completely from the plate when the key pressed, and it has two grooves in order to stop the pin while move vertically up and down through the unit cell.

The Transmission Unit Design It is express the object which will transfer the force from the keys to the alphabet pins, it's consist of several rods with different diameters and dimensions based on the analytical design we made. It will transfer the force vertically from the links of the keys to the desired pin which will reveals the pin above the surface of the unit.

Key’s Links Design Many designs was tried to reach to the right design for the links which expressing the supporters for the transmission units and to transfer the motion between the keys and the transmission unit. Link’s Side View

Unit Cell’s Assembly After finishing all the components manufacturing, the final stage will be assemble them in the right arrangement as we mentioned before, the main assembly part was the assemble of the unit components such as, metal balls, springs and screws.