vEyes Wear: open hardware and software wearable platform

Starting date
January 15, 2018
Duration (months)
12
Departments
Computer Science
Managers or local contacts
Carra Damiano

The wearable platform was among the 10 winners (out of 428 competing projects) to call for ideas "think for social", an initiative promoted by the Vodafone Italia Foundation, in technical collaboration with PoliHub (the incubator of the Polytechnic University of Milan) in order to discover and support innovative projects that exploit new technologies to better respond to current and emerging social needs. vEyes Wear is an open hardware and software platform based in this release on glasses and belt connected to an Android device (smartphone, tablet and/or smartwatch) where a blind can install “building blocks” (like a Lego) where every block is just an assistive device for the blind. Below are some of the various building blocks already included on platform:
Path tracer
Allows the detection of a path free of any obstacles, where for obstacle we mean a hole or a girder too, and signals it with the vibration of the temples;
Vocal Text Reader
Enables the recognition of a printed text viewed by the camera integrated in the glasses and to read it by using vocal synthesis;
Object Recognizer
Enabled the recognition of banknote, or any product with a label (food, drugs, wine, CD, etc.);
Colour Detector
Enables to recognize the colour of the object in front of the glasses and repeat the name of the colour by vocal synthesis.

Other available building blocks are the talking glucometer and the talking sphygmomanometer.
We will provide all the needed specifications, the API and the SDK so that anyone with the necessary skills, can create new building blocks (then new technological aids) for their loved ones and, if desired, to make them available for other blind people through the publication on the same portal.
The project aims to realize the third release of the glasses reducing the size, replacing the internal electronic circuit with a very low power and smallest components, using only one battery and integrating the bone conduction headset on the temples.

Project participants

Damiano Carra
Associate Professor
Rosalba Giugno
Full Professor

Activities

Research facilities

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