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| Project Guideline .. an app from Google to help the visually impaired |
Google is currently testing an AI-based app called Project Guideline, which allows blind and visually impaired people to work on their own without guide dogs or industrial assistants.
The app recognizes lines drawn on the ground and provides audio signals to users.
The project policy uses the phone's camera to follow the direction and then uses bone conduction technology to send the sound to the user through the headset.
The app is still in the prototype stage and was developed during the Google Hackathon last year when the blind runner asked the developer to design a program that could run independently.
(Thomas Bannick) Thomas Bannick, CEO of Guiding Eyes for Blind, interviewed the designers of Google Hackathon in Fall 2019 about the potential for design techniques that blind people can work with independently.
A demo has been developed so that the phone can recognize the line drawn on the ground and send out audio signals.
The app uses the camera of a phone connected to Google's AI belt worn by Panek to track the direction of a line drawn on the ground and send audio signals according to its location.
“If I move to the left side of the line, the sound is going up in my left ear, and if I move to the right, the same thing happens, but in my right ear,” Panek said.
Within a few months and with some modifications, the Panek was able to cross the inner path unaided.
Then the developers worked hard to adapt the technology to a number of new external obstacles.
The Project Guidance app works without the Internet and can calculate weather conditions.
There are millions of people who have lost guide dogs due to their loss of sight and Google hopes to amend and expand the project's guidelines to make people more independent.
Google is investing more and more in accessibility technology as it launched sound notifications in October, a new feature in Android that warns deaf users about running water or barking dogs.
This feature was developed for about 466 million hearing impaired people worldwide, but it can also help people who wear headphones.
The company has also developed its own Lookout app, which can be used to read emails and orally identify products.