The Seeing-Eye Computer

Bleeding Edge

from the poor-dogs,-out-of-work dept

Well, now it looks like even seeing-eye dogs are being put out of work by automation. Some researchers have been working on a “seeing-eye” computer to help guide the blind. The idea is to provide a pair of glasses with a camera and sensors to let the user know what’s happening around them – and it sounds fairly detailed. For example, it can say what the room is like, where the nearest exits are, how quickly other people are moving around them, and plenty of other info. The system can either continuously feed the user verbal info about what’s happening, or they can just have it respond to specific questions. It even has character recognition technology that it can read printed text (such as street signs, menus or even books) and speak the text to the user of the system. They say their next goal is to have it be able to read handwriting as well. They’re also experimenting with facial recognition, so that the system can tell the user who’s approaching them, or who they’re talking to. To be honest, many of the features sound like they could be useful to those of us who still see pretty well.