Athenahacks 2017
Re-imagining the White Cane for Visually Impaired Individuals through Technology
The Problem:
Target Audience: Visually impaired individuals A small portion of Individuals who are visually impaired use the white cane The cane affects the behaviors of others if they offer to help, sympathy, etc. Current devices/tools employed by the visually impaired include: guide dogs, friends/family, etc. Those visually impaired are unable to interact with screen based technology Solution:
A device/tool/service to assist visually impaired individuals A kinetic proximity sensor to detect how close an object is from a subject Utilizing a threshold to determine if the proximity is under a particular depth, if so, we alarm the user through a series of vibrations. Vibrations would be emitted through a smart watch or telephone. Technical Difficulties
All team members are beginners at coding Kinect is a relatively new device, so not much information is readily available Languages we used: JavaScript and C# No Athenahack mentors had experience with Kinect, only one Microsoft individual was fluent in Kinect. No Athenahack mentors had experience with programming Pebble Smartwatch Applications -- this led us to pivot towards notifying the user their proximity to an object through vibrations through mobile phones. Accomplishments that we're proud of
Creating a successful prototype to demonstrate our project Not giving up! Overcoming obstacles (time constraints, knowledge, resources, etc) Pivoting, and being open minded to new ideas and ways to improve our product. What we learned
Hackathons are cool! Kinetic, and how to program in C# with it C#, C++, JavaScript, Twilio, Express, and node.js How to pitch our product to judges How to create a server How to send text messages from a server Working with like-minded individuals Collaboration, Creativity, What's next for inSight
We hope to use the technology we've created to then condense the Kinect into a smaller device and turn it into a wearable. The technology employed in inSight can be used in other aspects such as Security.