EyeCane
UNOBTRUSIVE MOBILITY AID FOR BLIND PEOPLE, 2010
Amir Amedi & the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL)
How can we sense distant objects without vision? This question led to the development of the EyeCane: a lightweight, finger-sized, low-cost virtual cane. The EyeCane operates as a kind of virtual flashlight, replacing or strengthening the familiar white cane.
The device uses infrared sensors to estimate the distance between the user and the object at which it is pointing. This information undergoes a ‘sensory transformation’ and becomes vibrations, which are sent to the user’s hand via the device. The closer the user is to an object, the stronger the vibration. This allows people who are blind or who have a visual impairment to identify obstacles of different heights, understand the distance between themselves and the objects around them, and create a spatial picture through which they can navigate safely. The device is intuitive, and its application can be taught with a few minutes of use.
BIO
Amir Amedi is an internationally acclaimed brain scientist with fifteen years of experience in the field of brain plasticity and multisensory integration. He has a particular interest in visual rehabilitation. He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Medical Neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the The Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences. He is also an Adjoint Research Professor in the Sorbonne Universités and the Institut de la Vision in Paris, France. He holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at Hebrew University, and a Postdoctoral Fellow and Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Amir has won several international awards and fellowships such as The Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research, the Wolf Foundation (2011); The international Human Frontiers Science Program Organization Postdoctoral fellowship and later a Career Development award (2004 and 2009), and the JSMF Scholar Award in Understanding Human Cognition (2011). He was recently selected as a European Research Council (ERC) fellow.