Harvard's Mobilio app helps blind users navigate faster with AI and audio cues
Navigation App for People with Blindness and Low Vision
Harvard engineers have developed Mobilio, a smartphone app that uses AI, built-in sensors, and personalized audio beeps to give blind or low-vision users continuous guidance and obstacle avoidance. In tests with 14 participants, Mobilio plus a cane enabled 13% faster navigation and 41% fewer obstacle collisions than Google Maps plus a cane. The app runs entirely on a standard smartphone and is designed to be accessible and affordable.
Our system uses the sensors in a smartphone, GPS information, and the actual motion of the person to create what’s essentially a small autonomous vehicle plan on how to navigate them from where they are to where they want to go.
- BugsJustFindMe
For all the talk about Meta Ray-Ban glasses being used by creeps and assholes (no debate, they certainly are), the one anecdote I care most about is that a friend of mine who is blind absolutely loves his pair as a mobility aid. Things worth thinking about.
- rene_d
A friend of mine founded a startup with much the same concept several years ago - while it has matured in many ways the initial concept was to provide the user with spatial audio "sound beacons" / breadcrumbs they could intuitively follow: https://www.dreamwaves.io/