There are 285 million visually impaired people in the world, which is more than the population of UK and Japan combined. Unfortunately, India has the most. EyeQ is a Smart Visual-Aural aid to support the visually impaired by providing them with aural feedback in form of voice of their visual environment in a relatively inexpensive way. EyeQ is a wearable device that observes, understands and describes the environment via earphones to the visually impaired, providing useful information in real time and in a discreet way. EyeQ is a narrator to the visually impaired of this beautiful world.
EyeQ is able to:
1.) DESCRIBE THE SCENE: The narrative is generated by converting the scenes in front of them. Examples include 'A group of people playing a game of football', 'yellow truck parked next to the car', a bowl of salad kept on table'.
2.)RECOGNIZE FRIENDS WITH THEIR EMOTIONS: Recognizes friends and describes people around you, including their emotions. (Happy,Sad,Angry etc.)
3.)RECOGNIZE OBJECTS AND PRODUCTS: It captures image and then identify products/objects.
4.) NAVIGATION: It navigates the way and even alerts when an obstacle is in front of the person at a particular distance.
5.)TEXT READING: Provides audio guidance to capture a printed page, and recognizes the text, along with its original formatting.
6.)CURRENCY: Identifies currency notes.
...and much more.
The architecture of the system includes a Micro-Processor. A small camera which is retrofitted into a regular wearable, is connected to the Micro-Processor. The function of the code is to follow the command of the user and send it to various API's for recognition, navigation etc. tasks. When the user asks EyeQ to (For eg.) describe the scene, the EyeQ controller triggers and the respective command is implemented.
EyeQ is a sleek, wearable device for visually impaired people. It is lightweight, worn comfortably around the forehead. And designed for various environments and for use throughout the day.
EyeQ certainly has the potential to become a useful tool for those with vision impairments.
What a great idea with nobel cause. This kind of innovation is needed and we need to more emphatic towards blinds. Kudos to the idea and technology used in it