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This would be a great building block for a system that helps blind people navigate while walking.

I had a classmate in University who was strongly visually impaired. That guy did not need help navigating.

His sense of location and direction were incredible. Within a few weeks on campus, he could tell you- accurately- which direction any building was. Even off campus, he had this strong awareness of which direction North was.

Does anyone have theories on how he was able to do this, in a literal sense? I mean, humans quite literally don’t have any organs which can function as a compass (whereas we do, for example, have ones that function as clocks), right? So what signal could his brain have been tracking?

I suspect if you blindfolded him[0], spun him around until he was very dizzy, and then released him somewhere unfamiliar he wouldn't know which way was which. But as long as he had his bearings, he didn't lose them. He couldn't- he needed them to get around.

[0]Visually impaired, not completely blind, so the blindfold would matter in this case.

To add, I recently learned about RGB-D cameras from Computerphile.

https://youtu.be/bRkUGqsz6SI

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