Use Case Scenario

In the typical use case, a visually impaired person would buckle the viSparsh belt around his waist. The belt would, then, guide him to navigate. Whenever an obstacle comes into the path, viSparsh would inform him for the presence of an obstacle through vibration motors. The viSparsh belt would utilize the RGB image and Infrared depth data captured by Kinect to decide the incoming obstacle and its direction. Suppose if there is an obstacle in the right front of viSparsh user the belt would generate vibrations in the right side. The user would move in the opposite direction to avoid the obstacle.

This typical use case scenario is represented below through a figure-

First meeting with Prof Mangharam :)

Skype Meeting with Prof. Rahul Mangharam 

12-Sept-2011 

6.30 PM IST (9.30 AM EST)

•  Prof. Magharam directed us to take our ELM project work at YIF as a challenge in the form of a start-up company. He thereby suggested not only to emphasize on the technical aspects of the project but also to get exposed to aspects such as Market Research, User Experience, Case Studies etc.
• We were asked to immediately set up a lab at YIF to start our project work. For this we were asked to make and share a part list required for starting this project at the earliest.
• It was mentioned that after the completion of this initial task we would be required to write a second summary of how this product could be made viable by making it cost effective, working on the slim look, integrating with other solutions etc. Prof. asked us to give importance to the usability aspects of the product also as there is no point making a technological product unless it fulfils the demand of the users.

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Future Vision & Impact

We have been allotted the time span of four weeks to build this prototype inclusive of simulation and real time testing of the prototype. This would be submitted to Prof. Mangharam by a video demonstration.

Then we would be focusing on making it a more viable productized version. This includes developing customized version depending on the user requirements. For example, developing low cost solution with only necessary features would serve the people living in rural areas. And designing relatively high cost product with various additional features like GPS tracking, education and entertainment related application, etc. for the user who can afford to pay for more advanced version.

We firmly believe that the final product will certainly add a social value which would help the visually impaired to move from the shackles of their dependencies. It would create a sense of freedom in them and give them zeal towards living a happier life. It would further make them believe that too have equal opportunity as a normal person to grow and achieve. Thus, overall this product would create a high impact on the society. 

Initial Findings

On being given the initial idea, we started to find more about the latest inventions going on these fields. After some study we found that all the big universities across the world have a haptics division which are pursuing research in the domain of our present interest including MIT Media Labs, Stanford etc. Further, since the release of XBOX360 Kinect in November last year, almost all these haptic departments have started projects for leveraging Kinect's capability for making various haptic interfaces. Even though the release of Kinect has still not completed one year, vast applications have already been developed centered around it. Even the present study of work given to us belongs to that category. Even various applications are already existing in the labs/markets which make use Kinect for making assistance technological devices for the visually impaired people. 

Keeping in mind the above stated facts, we are now fully aware that our task would not be to simply emulate what already has been done at various places but to go few steps further to make an innovative product which helps the society to grow.

All excited for the first meeting with Prof. Rahul (Our mentor)

Few days back we got the news that Prof. Rahul Mangharam from UPenn will be mentoring us as part of our ELM@YIF. Since then we have been very excited to meet Prof. Mangharam . Prof. has come up with an initial idea to assuage our thirst for doing research in the areas of HCI, embedded systems and robotics while adding value to the society. The initial idea was as described in the blog: http://kinecthesia.blogspot.com/ . This was a 3.5 months project taken up by undergraduate students at UPenn early this year.

Since our ELM is of 8 months, the task given is to deliver a viable product taking 'Kinecthesia' as our premises. The idea statement has been stated as follows by the Prof. - "To develop a Haptic Belt with the XBOX360 Kinect for visually impaired persons" where the initial technical effort needs to be taken to develop some relatively low-cost technology pieces and integrating them into a socially useful application. Although this is just an initial idea, we hope to do effective brainstorming with the Prof. when we talk to him for the first time. We all are geared up to officially start the project from today. Yippeee :-)