GPS-Like System Designed To Lead Blind

By: Megan Shannon - All Headline News Staff Writer

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers may have found a new technology used to lead the blind. The equipment is compared to a Global Positioning System, only on a smaller, more intimate scale.

The System for Wearable Audio Navigation, or SWAN is attached to a headband and is essentially a "wearable computer." The headband's sensors can show the vision-impaired their way around a street block or their own home.

The equipment also has thermometers and light sensors to indicate whether the person is indoors or outdoors, it has a compass to show direction and tells the user how far away objects are. SWAN will send out audible signals that quicken when the user is close to their target and slow when they move further away. It will also play cue sounds when the user passes things like bathrooms or restaurants.

Now researchers must not only test and perfect the equipment they must also gather tons of information like building blueprints and maps so SWAN can indicate where obstacles like sidewalks, stairwells and doors are.

Bruce Walker, who helped develop the system, said, "It's going to take time. But getting floor plans for buildings is possible. We're trying to show that given a map, we can show the blind how to get places."