A "life-changing" invention from the West Bank | Hacker News Reader

A "life-changing" invention from the West Bank

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59 pointselblanco25 comments

tl;dw a cane for blind people using two proximity sensors to warn the user of obstructions or pitfalls, from 3 14-yo girls in a Palestinian high school. They're now in CA participating in an Intel-sponsored science fair.

Wow - an impressive and clever hack, leveraging cheap, simple technology in an easy-to-use design for a really worthwhile purpose - one that will benefit blind people worldwide, and from high-schoolers, no less. So much bad news comes out of the Middle East that it's heartening to hear of science being applied to such constructive ends.

I saw this demoed by Cambridge Consultants nearly 10 years ago. Let's hope these kids get it to market where it can actually be used by people.

Cambridge Consultants' press release about their "bat cane": http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/news_pr58.html

Man, I have to say that "Batcane" sounds like one of the worst product names I've ever heard of...

You could expand the forward sensor to multiples, for doorways or people, say; have a few, say, 5, or 3 at different horizontal forward angles, with corresponding vibrators or a sequence of audible beeps (low, non-annoying when nothing is present). The user would learn to map these vibrations / beeps to the real world, as shown by that guy with the belt of cellphone buzzers a couple of years ago.

I am soo surprised by this invention not hitting the market years ago. It surprises me to the fact that we still used just basic sticks for the blind. We are trying to fix their biological conditions, but never have we tried to just make it easier for them to get around while they wait for the biological part...

For my final-year undergraduate computer science project, myself and my project partner built a headset which consisted of wireless headphones, an accelerometer, a digital compass, ubisense location tracker (since been replaced by a high quality PS unit) and an ultrasonic sensor. It could serve a similar goal as the cane in this video and we had two demonstration applications based around the idea of using it as a guidance system for blind people: one was using audio "waypoints" to guide the wearer and the other was to detect obstacles using ultrasonic and providing audio feedback to give the user an idea of the obstacles location and size.

Other demo apps we created are a virtual band (you could walk around and between the instruments that were playing) and a virtual zoo (same idea as the band, except we played animal noises when you approached certain areas, demonstrated its location-aware use).

While we worked on this, we had some exposure to research being done in similar areas and one PHD students who was working on haptics was working on a virtual white cane - I guess a fancy high-tech version of the cane in this video (using haptic feedback instead of a buzzer and vibtrations, to give fine-grained feedback).

Since completing the project, my project partner worked on improving the headset for the first few months of his PHD and the hardware (which we built ourselves) was replaced with professionally manufactured (and I'm told millitary grade, eg our $25 accelerometer was replaced by a $2000 super-accurate one) components.

I guess what I'm saying is that the research is there and some work has been successfully done in this area, but very little has been commercialised so far. Perhaps these girls' success will inspire others to commercialise similar tools to aid people with disabilities.

Seriously. I can imagine a lot of intensive testing & analysis done with MRIs & sophisticated biochemistry. After all that, it's "You're blind. Here, use this stick."

A good friend of mine is blind. I think it has not made it to market because it's an over-engineered solution that doesn't solve the problem better. Most blind people would say 'Why the hell would I want a buzzer on a heavy cane?'. It buzzes when I am near a stair (aka all day long). Or it buzzes when it hit a step... like it does now when I hit it!

Great story, neat solution, not market viable.

Here's an idea. Add some spinning gyros in the handle (spinning perpendicular to the ground). Picture holding a bike wheel...

Then when the sensors detect an object the axis of the gyro tilt so that it cause the cane to move in the opposite direction of the object. This way you can "feel" objects as opposed to hear them.

Amen?

Gyros + batteries = heavy

Actually, MEMS gyros (~3-4v power requirement) with NiMh batteries (~8.4v) might work. Just mount batteries near the handle.

He's not suggesting using the hydro to detect position. He's suggesting using it for force feedback.

One would have to run the numbers before coming to that conclusion. A gyro spinning in a vacuum is very efficient and Li-ion battery amper-hour rating are quite impressive (meaning it could be small)

Even something like an actuator that rises up over the thumb to indicate an object might be better than an audible tone. In the city, traffic could easily swamp your little speaker.

The thumb could rest on the actuator and have 5-degrees of freedom.

Woot.

The hand-drawn periodic table in the background is sad.

Cheers for the girls, hope they make it to the prize.

I Feel like the periodic table in the background is great, not being produced on a mass scale doesn't reduce its value.

But it also speaks to the access to education those in the West Bank have compared to ALL their neighbours.

It doesn't speak of anything. It may have been a classroom project for all we know, in which case as commented above the students learned more than having an off-the-shelf poster.

No doubt it was a project. But in the video, there is not a single prefab poster in the room. The paint is also peeling, and it is probably the best classroom they have in the building.

Actually Palestinians have the highest literacy rate of any Arab nationals: http://middleeast.about.com/od/middleeast101/a/me090425b.htm

Good on them, in any case. We need more of that in the Middle East.

Both of you are agreeing with each other.

The periodic table may have been constructed by the students as a project. I remember giving my students a project where they had to draw the periodic table. They appreciated the break from the normal routine and it's a great way to get more familiar with the table.

It's not sad. We were required to draw our own periodic tables, multiplication tables, units and measures, etc. because you remember things better.

I bet a kid who makes his own periodic table learns and remembers more elements, quicker, than someone who gets to buy it printed and framed.

Something similar was patented in 1991: http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=ggQqAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...

Got the link from Reddit.

A local high-school science program did this a few years ago as well, for an MIT sponsored challenge. Came up with the same basic idea.

Sincerely I think the original cane was a more breakthrough idea.

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