HandSight: A Glove for the Blind to Feel Shapes and Navigate Obstacles

HandSight is a prototype glove to aid the blind. It can sense the lightness or darkness of a surface with tactile feedback from a vibration motor for each individual finger. It can also sense distance from physical objects or obstructions and indicate direction and distance with the same vibration feedback. It supports additional modes, and the possibilities are nearly endless. The glove can connect over Bluetooth to switch modes and visualize the sensor readings.

This instructable was made as part of the final project requirement in the CS graduate course "Tangible Interactive Computing" at the University of Maryland, College Park taught by Professor Jon Froehlich. The course focused on exploring the materiality of interactive computing and, in the words of Hiroshii Ishii, sought to "seamlessly couple the dual worlds of bits and atoms." Please see http://cmsc838f-f12.wikispaces.com/ for more details.

See our Wiki class page for the project here (where we talk about some of our challenges and limitations):
http://cmsc838f-f12.wikispaces.com/HandSight

Step 1: List of Materials

- Arduino Pro Mini-328 (5v, 3.3v may work but not tested) (x1)
- IR Reflectance Sensor - QRE1113 (x4)
- Vibration Motor ROB-08449 (x4)
- Ultrasonic Range Finder (x2) http://www.amazon.com/Ultrasonic-Module-HC-SR04-Distance-Arduino/dp/B004U8TOE6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355861471&sr=8-1&keywords=Ultrasonic+Range+Finder
- Bluetooth Mate Silver WRL-10393 (x1)
- 68 ohm Resistor (x1)
- 9v Battery and Battery Case with Switch (x1)
- FTDI cable (for programming) (x1)
- Double Sided Sticky Tape, or other adhesive to hold the ultrasonic sensors in place
- Wire, electrical tape, and soldering materials. Rainbow ribbon cable is recommended for easy wiring of the fingertip sensors.
- Glove that you don’t mind repurposing permanently
- Extra cloth that matches the glove
- Velcro, Sewing Materials
- Windows Phone to run our visualization and control app, or any device that supports the Bluetooth Serial Port Protocol (SPP) if you want to develop your own app

All electronic components available on sparkfun unless otherwise noted

Comments

[HighWing]

I've been thinking about making this myself and I thought I read somewhere that you had initally wanted to make it as a head mount but realized that the vibration motors on the head were a bad idea. Which is why you made them into a glove. However, I've used many glove devices for VR simulators and such, and I find that holding your hands out becomes tiresome pretty quickly.

So I was wondering about modifing your design to still put the dectors on a hat/headband, but move the motors to something you ware on a belt clip or somewhere else?

[lstearns86]

This is an interesting idea, and certainly feasible. Our original plan was actually to make a belt with the vibration motors sewn into the fabric, and the ultrasonic sensors placed at different angles around it. When we started focusing more on the tactile surface feedback via the reflectance sensors we decided it made more sense to put everything on the hand instead. I don't see any reason why you couldn't put the sensors and feedback mechanism in different places, especially if you're only interested in the navigation portion.

One of our early inspirations was the idea of a haptic compass like the one described here: http://www.gradman.com/hapticcompass. It uses multiple vibration motors to indicate direction, and can either point north or toward an arbitrary compass direction for guidance. It wouldn't be too hard to modify that idea to give feedback from the ultrasonic distance sensors instead (or as well).

If you want to put the sensors on the head, you could use long wires as long as their resistance isn't too high. An alternative would be to build a second arduino device and have them communicate over Bluetooth.

[huntjulien]

crazy cool. you guys are amazing