At the University of Southern California James Weiland, a vision researcher and biomedical engineer may have created robot vision for the blind. He and his colleague Gérard Medioni, a robotics professor at the university have come up with a tool that would help the blind negotiate potential obstacles much better than the traditional white cane would.
The group of engineering researchers at the university has come up with a guide vest that works in conjunction with a camera mounted on a helmet and special software. This allows the wearer to see the obstacles before them through tactile feedback.
Professor Medioni said that they wanted to build an effective system that would provide new opportunities for the visually impaired. He also said that there were many limitations to canes for the visually impaired, from low hanging branches to large objects. The prototype of the guide vest was presented at the 2011 meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology.
With the help of the guide vest the visually impaired person would be able to navigate obstacles in the path safely. The vibrations in the vest would correspond to the position of the obstacle as seen by the helmet mounted camera.
For example, a vibration on the left shoulder indicates an object on the upper left, such as a low hanging branch, while a vibration on the right waist will indicate an object on the lower right, such as a trashcan. So if there were no vibrations, it was a obstacle free path for the person to travel down.