Stanford Researchers Design a High-Tech White Cane That Nudges Users Away From Obstacles

Engineers at Stanford University have tried to enhance the usual white cane, used to assist visually impaired individuals transfer round independently and safely. In a brand new research this week, their design, merely named the Augmented Cane, appeared to enhance the strolling velocity and navigation abilities of each sighted and visually impaired individuals. The scientists say their open supply design ought to make it simpler for this expertise to ultimately attain the visually impaired neighborhood.

Canes for navigation have been used for hundreds of years by some visually impaired and blind individuals. But it wasn’t till the early twentieth century that the white cane—the white is supposed to make the cane most simply noticeable to others—became synonymous with visible help. Despite this lengthy historical past, solely a small proportion of eligible individuals use white canes (8%, in keeping with one estimate). Canes aren’t an ideal resolution for detecting obstacles whereas strolling, even after the intensive coaching wanted to make use of them, and there are different strategies for navigation, similar to a information canine, which may be most well-liked.

Patrick Slade, a PhD pupil in robotics at Stanford, had been centered on methods to enhance the mobility by way of exoskeletons or prostheses. But throughout his time at Stanford’s Intelligent Systems Lab, he started to study new developments in bettering autonomous autos. It made him ponder whether a few of this work could possibly be utilized to bettering the basic cane.

“The challenges of the visually impaired community are well documented in research literature, but their methods of navigation and preferred solutions depend on a lot of factors such as level of impaired vision, physical fitness, income, location/walkability of their neighborhood, etc,” Slade advised Gizmodo in an e-mail.

The Augmented Cane, which is described in a brand new study printed in Science Robotics, has two main variations from a typical white cane. Near the bottom, there’s a tool full of numerous sensors, together with a digital camera, that gather details about the atmosphere across the particular person, together with GPS and LIDAR knowledge (LIDAR makes use of mirrored laser mild to estimate how distant different objects are). At the foot of the cane, there’s a omni-directional wheel that comes with settings to regulate for an individual’s strolling velocity and haptic suggestions to nudge the person to steer left or proper as wanted (the identical primary idea is seen in online game controllers that vibrate in response to recreation actions). In principle, the system ought to choose up on potential obstacles forward and help in navigating unfamiliar locations.

To check out their cane, Slade and his group had visually impaired and sighted individuals (24 in complete) full a sequence of navigation challenges in each outside and indoor environments. Sighted individuals have been novices at utilizing a cane, whereas these visually impaired had at the very least just a few years of expertise; all of them have been blindfolded beforehand. The Augmented Cane appeared to outperform the white cane throughout these assessments.

“Our experimental findings showed that across a range of indoor and outdoor tasks people with impaired vision chose to walk faster when using the Augmented Cane compared to a standard cane. This means our device provides some mobility benefits,” Slade mentioned. “In addition, we did some experiments to show our device could provide assistance that a normal cane could not (for example routing to a specific room or object in an indoor setting like going to a coffee shop in a mall).”

There have been makes an attempt to develop so-called sensible canes previously. But one main stumbling block to their widespread use has included worth, with some units costing over $1,000, in comparison with the usual cane, which may price as little as $20. Some researchers have additionally criticized the shortage of involvement from visually impaired cane customers throughout improvement, which may result in units that don’t actually present many added advantages.

Slade says that his group’s cane was co-designed with the assistance of visually impaired individuals, who supplied suggestions on what they might need from a sensible cane. He famous that any single design is unlikely to suit everybody’s wants, however they tried to cowl as many bases as doable.

“One result I found surprising was that the participants with impaired vision had an average of 20 years of experience using a white cane, but self-selected a faster walking speed with our device after only 5 minutes of training. This suggests to me that our haptic feedback method is accurate and that relaying information about the environment to the user might improve their confidence and allow them to walk faster,” Slade famous.

The group additionally uploaded their design to an open supply database, which means that others can now enhance on it. They’ve already recognized some doable avenues for upgrades, supplied they will get extra time and sources to develop it additional. In specific, they purpose to make future variations of the cane lighter.

“Although our device is relatively low cost ($400), open-source, and lightweight (~2 lbs) relative to other research devices, it definitely has room for improvement to become a product. For example, every participant commented on the weight of the prototype in a follow-up survey,” he mentioned. “I think the technology and software is available to make it a really friendly, easy to use device—it would just take some additional product development and user testing.”

In the long run, he added, it’s doable that the system would possibly solely require one thing so simple as a smartphone and wheel attachment to work, making it straightforward for customers so as to add to their present cane and to take away when not wanted.