1. Mobility Aid For The Blind By Amir Gonnen

2. The oldest aids Walking Cane Guide dog Problems: – Skills and Training phase – Range – Very little information conveyed

3. A Technological Solution Information about the environment Digital Processing Perceptual input perceived by the blind SensorComputerOutput Device This is where I’m going to focus

4. Recent Developments Soundscapes from “The vOICe” “Stereo vision system for the Visually Impaired”, University of Guelph, Canada The “NavBelt” The “GuideCane”

5. “ The vOICe ” “ The vOICe ”

6. Stereo Vision

7. The “ NavBelt ”

8. The “ GuideCane ”

9. Problems Too much information Missing sub-conscious vision processes – Interpretation of a continuous 2D signal into a set of recognizable objects in a 3D space – Movement velocity and direction

10. Solution Emulating some of the sub- conscious processes in a computer Describe the world as a set of objects in a 3D space

11. Intro to the Simulation

12. Do We Get A Better Perception? The Simulation: – A 3D room with several objects – Each object has its own sound The sound is located at the object – Stereo sound  the direction of the object – Volume  How far is the object The beat scanner – divides the field view into sectors – More accurate perceptual direction

13. More About the Simulation The simulation solves several problems: – How to separate sounds of different objects, so that not all objects will be heard at once ? – How to give a good indication of object’s type, direction and distance at the same time ? Tradeoff between Resolution in Time and in Space.

14. Experiment Let the subject close her eyes and guess which object is visible, its direction and its distance. Results: – Recognition was correct in 80%-90% of the cases. – Notable improvement over time.

15. Experiment Video

16. Conclusion Still a lot of work to be done – Computer vision: how do we recognize objects on 3D space using a raw 2D signal ? – How do we assign sounds to different objects ? – How much information can be perceived using sound in a given time frame ? Real progress could be achieved when we understand and able to emulate the cognitive processes of human vision