People with visual impairments typically use white canes and guide dogs for smoother navigation, even though modern tech already has the capacity to make things easier. Maybe now’s the time for change?
A critical barrier to making life easier for visually impaired individuals has always been the inability of human-machine interfaces to communicate precise navigation instructions non-visually.
But now, researchers from Imperial College London, working with the company MakeSense Technology and the charity Bravo Victor, have developed a shape-changing device called Shape that helps people with visual impairment navigate through haptic perception – the way people understand information about objects through touch.
The device, which looks like a torch, bends to indicate where a person needs to move and straightens when the user is facing the correct direction.
In a study published in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers detail how they tested whether people with visual impairment were able to locate targets in a virtual reality (VR) space using Shape and vibration feedback technology.
Sighted individuals were also recruited for the study to locate the targets in the VR space using only their natural vision.
Probably most importantly, the trial found that there was no significant difference in the performance between visually impaired participants using Shape and sighted participants using only natural vision.
The trial also found that participants with visual impairment located targets significantly faster using Shape than with vibration technology. Feedback showed that participants with visual impairment preferred using Shape to vibration technology.
“The exciting thing about this study is we’ve managed to demonstrate that Shape can help people with visual impairment perform a navigation task as well as sighted people. This is something that we haven’t seen before with other navigation devices,” said Dr Ad Spiers, lead researcher for the study, from Imperial’s Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
The device, which looks like a torch, bends to indicate where a person needs to move and straightens when the user is facing the correct direction.
According to Spiers, the new device is unique because it “understands” information through touch in a way that goes beyond vibration. And because humans have an innate ability to feel and interpret shapes through their hands, Shape is simple to learn and isn’t tiring to use.
Researchers hope the device will be the future of navigation technology for visual impairment because current tools aren’t enough.
For instance, guide dogs are often effective but they require expensive expert training and can cost thousands of pounds per year to keep, and white canes enable navigation through a process of elimination by telling users where not to go, rather than where they should go. This process limits a user's ability to navigate freely in complex environments.
Of course, recent inventions are more modern and tend to focus on using auditory interfaces. These give audio cues such as “turn left at the next corner” or vibration feedback, alerting a user through vibration patterns that indicate where to move.
But again, auditory interfaces can prevent people from hearing important warning sounds of imminent hazards and can dampen users’ ability to engage fully with the world, while vibration feedback can lead to numbness and irritation after prolonged periods of use.
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