Mark Anthony Riccobono will go into the books as the first blind person to independently drive a car. For the NFB Blind Driver ChallengeT, a program of the U.S. National Federation of the Blind, a Ford Escape hybrid was packed full with technology whi…
Author: Medgadged
Blind Man Driving Around Daytona Independently
Mark Anthony Riccobono will go into the books as the first blind person to independently drive a car. For the NFB Blind Driver ChallengeT, a program of the U.S. National Federation of the Blind, a Ford Escape hybrid was packed full with technology which enabled him to successfully navigate 1.5 miles of the road course section at the Daytona International Speedway. The car has laser range-finding sensors that enable the computation of a three-dimensional map of the road environment. The TORC Bywire XGV drive-by-wire system is used to convert this data into driving directions. Directions are then sent to some clever devices: DriveGrip, a pair of vibrating gloves that relay steering information, SpeedStrip, a vibration-based device that relays speed information, and AirPix, a device that uses compressed airflow patterns to create tactile images. While the technique is very much the same as that used in autonomous vehicles, the goal here is to allow the blind person to do the actual driving. To make it more difficult, several obstacles were placed in the path of the vehicle, including stationary obstacles and boxes dropped from a van, which he all successfully avoided. No doubt it will take many more years before such a car will be allowed on the public road, but as you can see in the video below, the system works surprisingly well:
Curvilinear Camera Adds Zoom Features For an Even Closer Look at Your Innards
Last time we covered an eyeball-like camera being developed by Northwestern University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, they had developed flexible light sensors for capturing sharp images much in the same way our eyes capture images.
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Pediatric Vision Screener from Children’s Hospital Boston
David Hunter, chief of ophthalmology at Children’s Hospital Boston, developed a prototype device for detecting amblyopia (lazy eye) and anisometropia (the two eyes bend light at different angles) in young children. Diagnosing the conditions early can …
Medical Innovation @ CES 2011: PixelOptics emPower! Electronic Eyeglasses
Hey, bifocal users! Do your glasses give you headaches? Are you straining your eyes trying to see the paper through that tiny reading segment? Are progressive bifocals sooooo 2010? There’s good news for you!
This week at CES, Viriginia-based PixelOpt…
Through The Eyelid Tonometry for Glaucoma Testing
Intraocular pressure is usually measured by applying a force on the cornea using a tonometer. Although sufficiently accurate, tonometers are only used in ophthalmologist offices and so don’t measure intra-day pressures. They also fail with people pos…
Dankam Augmented Reality App for the Colorblind
Dankam is an augmented reality app for the iPhone that helps colorblind people discriminate between colors. Named after its author, Dan Kaminsky, it helps by automatically converting colors in the image which normally can’t be differentiated by people…
Laser System Creates Near Perfect Lens Pocket for Cataract Surgery
Though cataract surgery requires millimeter precision, it is still very much a manual procedure requiring steady hands on the part of the surgeon. A new system, developed at Stanford and being commercialized by OpticaMedica Corp. of Santa Clara, CA, u…
Canon Gets U.S. Approval for CR-2 Digital Retinal Camera
Canon U.S.A. has received FDA approval for its CR-2 Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal Camera. The system accepts any Canon EOS camera, which therefore defines the exact specs of the system.
Retinal Implant Successful in Bringing Vision to Blind
Retina Implant AG out of Reutlingen, Germany is reporting the publication of a clinical study evaluating the company’s subretinal electronic chips in totally blind volunteers. The device contains 1500 active microphotodiodes, each with “its own …
Canon’s New CR-2 Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal Camera
Last week Canon previewed its new CR-2 Digital Non-Mydriatic Retinal Camera at the Vision Expo West in Las Vegas. The device can be used with any Canon EOS camera, which means that specs are dependent on what model you go with. The CR-2 still require…
LEDs for Multispectral Imaging of the Ocular Fundus
Researchers at the University College London have developed a method to acquire multispectral images of the ocular fundus using LED illumination and a high-sensitivity CCD camera. Multispectral imaging makes it possible to visualize the different light…
FDA Approves VisionCare’s Implantable Miniature Telescope
Saratoga, CA based VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies, Inc. has announced FDA approval of company’s Implantable Miniature Telescope, which we have been following since 2005. The device is designed to treat end-stage age-related macular degeneration (A…
Cheap and Easy Eye Tests On Your Cell Phone
Researchers at MIT have developed a method of using a basic cell phone coupled with a cheap and simple plastic device clipped onto the screen to estimate refractive errors and focal range of eyes. Because of its simplicity and the fact that soon just …
Optovue iVue Optical Coherence Tomography System Gets FDA Nod
Optovue has received 510(k) FDA clearance for its iVue compact SD-OCT (spectral-domain optical coherence tomography). Optical coherence tomography uses the scattering of light in tissue to create high resolution 3D images, but is limited to visualizing…
Synthetic Corneal Prosthesis Developed by Fraunhofer
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research in Potsdam-Golm, Germany, have developed a corneal prosthesis made of plastic. Currently, the only option to replace a damaged or diseased cornea is by corneal transplantation, howev…
Technology Converts Facial Emotions into Tactile Feedback for Visually Impaired
Shafiq ur Réhman, a doctoral student at Umeå University in Sweden has unveiled his thesis project, a technology that converts facial emotions into special tactile sensations for the visually impaired. The system uses a webcam to capture …
Orbital Tissue Expander Wins at MDEA
The Orbital Tissue Expander (OTE) from Innovia LLC of Miami, Florida was one of three winners in the Implant and Tissue-Replacement Products category of the 2010 Medical Design Excellence Awards. The device is used to treat infants with congenital an…
Oraya’s IRay Stereotactic Radiotherapy System Receives CE Mark
Oraya Therapeutics, of Newark, CA, has received CE approval for its IRay stereotactic radiotherapy system. The IRay system is a low-energy, stereotactic radiosurgical device for the office-based, noninvasive treatment of wet age-related macular degener…
Canon’s Hybrid Mydriatic/Non-Mydriatic Digital Retinal Camera Receives 510(k) Clearance
Canon has received 510(k) clearance from the FDA for the CX-1 Hybrid Mydriatic/Non-Mydriatic Digital Retinal Camera. The device is Canon’s first fully hybrid digital retinal camera with both mydriatic and non-mydriatic modes, which may not only save t…