25th June 2022, A research project, led by AIT doctoral student Xavier J. Blake and Professor Manukid Parnichkun, from the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering in the School of Engineering and Technology developed a cutting-edge camera to tactile haptic display device enhancing the lives of the visually impaired. Aimed at alleviating the challenges posed by vision loss, this innovative technology promises to revolutionize accessibility for individuals with visual impairments.
The system, detailed in their recent research paper, introduces a 10×15-resolution electromagnetic levitation-based tactile haptic display, seamlessly bridging the gap between the visually impaired and visual media. By processing images captured by a camera mounted on eyeglasses, the system translates visual information into tactile experiences, offering users the ability to sense and interpret low-resolution binary, grayscale, and color images with remarkable millimeter accuracy. The development, supported by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) of Thailand, signifies a significant stride in leveraging technology to empower those with visual challenges.
Assistive devices for the visually impaired have the purpose of reducing the stress of vision loss, and to support their more constrained lifestyles. Blindness prevents the viewing of visuals media, but the use of tactile non-visual haptic displays will reduce this limitation and improve the quality of life of these people. A 10×15-resolution electromagnetic levitation-based tactile haptic display system is developed in this paper. Series of images from a camera attached to eyeglasses are processed and converted to 10×15-resolution gray-scale images before being sent to a set of controllers that use voltage-based feedback control to raise 150 taxels of the haptic display to the heights of the corresponding gray values. A locking mechanism allows the users to press their hands on the haptic display without changing the image pattern for 5 seconds. Practical tests indicated that the developed haptic display could display low-resolution binary, grayscale and color images with the taxel displacements at millimeter accuracy.
In this research project, a camera to tactile haptic display system was developed for use by the visually impaired. Frames from a glasses-mounted camera were processed by a master controller and forwarded via RS485 communication to a set of slave controllers. These controllers employed PID with gravity and coulomb friction compensation controllers in tandem to set the taxel displacements to the setpoints corresponding to the received image. After the heights were set, a lock was engaged, enabling the user to sense the tactile image without affecting the pins. This haptic display had the resolution to 10×15. The test results presented that millimeter accuracy could be achieved, while having notable overshooting when the difference between sequential setpoints is high. Low detail images were visually recognizable on the haptic display.
This research project is financially supported by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) of Thailand. The authors received the support of parts machining from Mr. Thanit Pattana and the support of machine vision programming from Mr. Rom Parnichkun.
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