On March 20th, 2021, IIT AGNE and Vision Aid hosted a talk by Prof. M. Balakrishnan, IIT Delhi on the work done by the students and faculty working at ASSITECH on developing innovative new technologies for vision impaired people. The technologies developed include a successful smart cane system with tens of thousands of users across multiple countries, 3D Printed tactile graphics for books, dynamic refreshable books with shape memory alloys, mobile assistant using artificial intelligence and indoor navigation using path planning approaches. Prof. Balakrishnan described the challenges inherent in designing for the vision impaired, which are being overcome by the dedicated and capable group at ASSITECH.
The meeting started with an introduction by Mr. Puran Dang, Chairman of Vision Aid and one of the earliest active IIT alumnus in the Boston area. Mr. Ramakrisha Raju, founder and Executive Director of Vision Aid, gave an overview of their activities, including new Vision Aid centers across India. Roopesh Mathur, President of IIT AGNE, gave a brief description of IIT AGNE and its activties. Mr. Ravi Rastogi introduced Prof. Balakrishnan, who delivered his talk. Vivek Badami and Durriya Doctor ran the event and handled questions.
The visually impaired face challenges in navigating the modern world: how can they avoid serious injury by running into a tree limb, air conditioner box or a sleeping dog? When they get to bus stop or subway station, how do they know which side of the station the bus or train is going to arrive and be there in time? When they are in a large indoor space, such as a stadium or a large corporate campus, how can they navigate to their destination safely in time?
In an increasingly digital world dominated by mobile communication and devices, how can they fully participate in society and avoid marginalization? For those who want to get a STEM education and then employment in growing sectors of the economy, they need to have access to textbooks that they can learn from as well as the ability to read digital documents and consume media content.
There are many technologies in development across the world to solve these problems, but they tend to be expensive and not work in unstructured environments seen in India and other countries, where there are millions of vision impaired people. The ASSISTECH group at IIT Delhi is an interdisciplinary center with dedicated faculty and students who are using cutting edge approaches to solve these problems. Many of them start as undergraduates doing special projects to solve problems, which grow into Ph.D. theses. Over the years, they have built momentum towards a successful portfolio of solutions that are proving themselves in the real world. Prof. Balakrishnan highlighted seven key people, including a Rhodes Scholar, who have played a key role.
The most successful technology being developed is a smart cane system to alert to obstacles in the path, which is called UltraCane. This is a low cost technology built for unstructured environments, which is being used by tens of thousands of visually impaired persons across India and Bangladesh. UltraCane has local language support, as well as manufacturing know-how for assembly line production to build momentum towards world-widen success.
The next technology coming to fruition is the Onboard technology system to help find the right bus or train to take, and alert when the bus comes in to reach the right door. Here, the bus is enabled to provide information, such as route number and the location of the door. The user can query buses as they arrive at the bus stop and board the right bus. In trials being conducted in Mumbai and Delhi with hundreds of users, the Onboard system enabled visually impaired users to find the right bus 94% of the time. ASSISTECH is looking to scale OnBoard to city wide deployment with a regulatory requirement, as well as investment in scaling up.
A novel use of 3DPrinting technology is to print tactile Braille diagrams at much lower costs, which are critical for learning STEM concepts, leveling the playing field for visually impaired students learning science and engineering. This project has been incubated as a startup from IIT Delhi and has made all NCERT textbooks available from class VI onwards.
The DotBook technology, which is Dynamic refreshable displays based on shape memory alloys are affordable and make it possible for visually impaired to consume digital documents and media. Other systems, typically based on piezoelectric actuation are highly patented and expensive by comparison. DotBook was launched in 2019 to enable web surfing and digital document creation, and costs Rs. 40,000 vs Rs. 1.8 lakhs (1$USD = INR 73) for other solutions. They are looking for funding to work with the Raised Lines Foundation to provide DotBook to 200 technical education students who are visually impaired. The ultimate goal is to reach 1 Million lives by 2022.
A series of projects based on Artificial Intelligence based approaches is under development: these include MAVI (Mobile Assistant for Visually Impaired) for mobile object detection and reading signboards in multiple languages, RAVI (Reading Assistant for Visually Impaired) for reading digital documents such as textbooks in PDF format. IncluNAV is being developed for indoor navigation in indoor environments, where GPS will not work. This is a sophisticated system that incorporates mobile apps with bluetooth beacons for path planning, as well as multilingual interface. IncluNAV is being tested at the AIIMS Delhi Ophthalmology Center.
Prof. Balakrishnan described some of the obstacles and barriers facing technology development and scale up for large numbers of visually impaired people. The funding for developing these technologies is sparse, and usually comes from NGOs and foundations such as the Welcome Trust. Supporting infrastructure is weak and there is a lack of an organized marketplace. The solutions have to be extremely affordable and robust, forcing rapid evolution of hardware and software. All these factors make it hard for young technologists and engineers to make a future in this area.
In closing comments, Mr. Partha Ghosh made a very critical point, which is that we need to celebrate success and risk taking leadership in difficult areas where technology can make the difference by taking a step into the unknown, and young Indians need to be taught at the beginning of their education to solve large problems faced by society and not be content with back room roles.
A link to the recording on hosted on YouTube is here.
If you liked this talk and would like to see more, or if there are other topics that you’d like to see covered via webinars, please drop in a line to roopesh@iitagne.org.
