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Headband Gives Wearer "Sixth-Sense"
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports on a headband developed at the University of Tokyo that allows the wearer to feel their surroundings at a distance — as if they had cats whiskers. Infrared sensors positioned around the headband vibrate to signal when and where an object is close. There are also a few great videos of people using it to dodge stuff while blindfolded."
Actually, one of the main features of the walking-stick/cane is that it helps detect features just above ground level, such as curbs and stairs. A band wrapped around the head would help against trees and walls, but not against the curb.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
I made almost exactly the same thing at Towson University last semester with a research grant. I have a Daventech SRF04 ultrasonic rangefinder mounted on a baseball cap which is polled by an Acroname Brainstem PIC module. That data is averaged over a short time and sent out to a servo that is strapped to the user's palm. The end result is that the servo presses against the user's palm with a pressure inversely proportional to the distance read by the rangefinder. It really does work very well, it's very responsive and it's not too dificult to at least avoid bumping into things. The only problem is that it's not in stereo; I would eventually like to add more rangefinders and more servos. The other problem is that the user has to move their head around constantly to get distance information; I talked this over with a blind friend of mine and he suggested that the sensor be mounted on the hand or wrist along with the servo, this way it's a little more intuitive and less cumbersome/dorky-looking/tiresome. I really wish I'd published at least something somewhere; when my advisor was talking about it (it wasn't my idea, I just designed and built it) I remember thinking "I can't believe nobody else has made something like this before." Ah well.