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Curse of the depth camera

A project log for HaptiVision

A haptic vest for orientation for the blind

jantharJanThar 09/03/2017 at 20:230 Comments

The whole systems works well on exhibitions: High tables and standing persons result that the camera opening angle is not as bad as in real life. Our basic example for a real life problem with this angle is always something in head area: with the belly-mounted camera the system will warn you if it is far away that you will have to duck through vibrations in the upper part of the motor array, but when the object is directly in front of the person the camera will look below it and won't warn the wearer anymore. An more obvious problem is glass: While the user trust the system quite fast good enough to walk around with closed eyes, at some point dependent on the location they where straigth moving into glass fronts or mirrors, if we wouldn't stop them. Another problem not shown on exhibitions is that the infrared based camera system won't work in sunlight, reducing the usability drastic.

Our intended solution is in the next step adding additional ultrasonic and lidar system for the near range, if we can build a system with fast enough response time on ultrasonic basis as a sort of rough 3D scanner, we might try to replace the camera system as most expensive part of the system complete, or at least reduce it to an optional add on.

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