AI and other disruptive techs are aiding visually impaired people to navigate with ease

According to NCBI data, there were almost 253 million people with visual impairment globally, and out of this 36 million people were blind. The American Foundation for the Blind is working on a study that ponders on the technology experience of visually impaired employees, aims to understand the challenges in workplaces and derive solutions for the same. Technology has been a great help to people with visual impairment in easing life experiences in different ways and AI has enhanced this assistance.

Developing assistive technology for the visually impaired need to go through various challenging scenarios. Although, there have been solutions like apps and smartphones, an actual assistive wearable or tech that can be physically integrated into their lives sounds more supportive. These days many such assistive tech products have been occupying the space.

Recently an AI-powered backpack has been catching eyeballs. Jagadish K Mahendran, an artificial intelligence developer, along with his team developed a portable assistive solution for people with visual impairment. The backpack is powered by Intel's advanced AI processors and it can smartly replace a guide dog or a cane to help them navigate through the world with much ease.

In a world where there are only limited assistive techs that enable independent navigation to visually impaired people, this voice-assisted backpack is becoming revolutionary.

The system contains a laptop enclosed in a small backpack, a vest jacket concealing a camera, and a pocket-size battery pack that can run for eight hours housed inside a waist bag. A Luxonis OAK-D spatial AI camera can be fixed to the vest or waist bag and connected to the laptop inside the backpack.

According to Intel, the OAK-D camera unit is a powerful AI device that runs on Intel Movidius VPU  and the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit for on-chip edge AI inferencing. Another unique character is its Bluetooth-enabled earphones that can interact with the user in verbal cues. The user can give a command or ask questions to the voice assistant and it can guide them through by notifying them against traffic signs, crosswalks, changing elevations, steps, and other obstacles.

By introducing advanced AI technology and computer vision into a small carriable backpack, Jagadish has created a great tech that can provide reliable assistance to people with visual impairment.

Now let us go through some other unconventional assistive techs that have surfaced recently.

• OrCam MyEye, a voice-activated wearable device developed by an Israel-based company. It can be virtually attached to any pair of glasses and can read to the user about anything on any surface and provides visual information audibly in real-time. It is suitable for people who have any and all levels of visual difficulties or impairment. This wireless device can be connected through Bluetooth and also have tine speakers. They can even recognize and read the faces of people through the optical sensors attached and impart the information to the user.
• OrCam Read is another pen-size device that can assist people with reading disabilities and visual impairment to digitally read both print and digital surfaces. This AI-based assistive technology won CES 2021 innovation award. It works on a text-to-speech reading engine, advanced computer vision, and AI.
• Envision glasses are another advanced assistive technology based on AI. It can turn any form of text into speech and supports over 60 languages. These smart glasses are designed for visually impaired people. The AI-assisted software is integrated into lightweight Google glass to offer a cost-effective visual aid technology. Advanced AI and Optical Character Recognition technology combine to provide the worldview through speech. It can provide descriptions of scenes through audio, recognize the faces of the user's friends and family, help find personal belongings, and video call anyone in real-time.

All these wearable AI-assisted technologies are comfortable, easy, reliable, and acceptable. They work towards making the lives of visually impaired people easier and smarter with less dependency on other conventional methods. When people having visual difficulties can get independent and hands-free assistance, it will provide them immense freedom to view and understand the world.