Facial Recognition Cane For Blind People

on May 15, 2015 at 11:15 am

Presented By Wingz – Scheduled Airport Rides

“Kindness is a language which the blind can see and the deaf can hear.” — Mark Twain

Who is your favorite superhero character? Batman, Superman, Captain America, or Iron Man?

There may be no superheroes in real life, but being born as a blind person may turn you into a superhero. To help themselves with daily activities, blind people must learn the skills and techniques which will enable them to carry on as a normal, productive citizen in the community.

For the 314 million visually impaired individuals in the world, as estimated by the World Health Organization, daily tasks that seeing people take for granted can become difficult challenges. From getting dressed in the morning to cooking breakfast, a blind person must organize his life meticulously to live independently.

Thanks to students at Birmingham City University who just introduced a revolutionary smart cane that enables blind people to instantly recognize friends and family members, life of blind people will be much easier from now on.

Technically, the “XploR” cane uses smartphone technology to recognize familiar faces from up to 33 feet away. Once it’s picking up a recognizable individual from a bank of images stored in an internal SD memory card, the cane will then vibrate and guide the user toward the friend or family member using an earpiece and audio guidance, with the information being relayed through bluetooth signals.

“We found that high-spec technology features were essential requirements for users, as well as the cane needing to be fairly lightweight and easy to use,” said Waheed, one of the students who created this cane.

The team has already presented the XploR cane to medical and science professionals in Luxembourg and France, and plan to visit organizations in Germany later this year. “We’ll be returning to the Beacon Centre later this year for people to test the product and also to highlight the training and security features of the cane.”

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