XploR: A white cane capable of guiding its blind user to nearby friends and relatives within a distance of 10 meters is being developed by a team of students at Birmingham City University.
XploR was developed by computer science students Steve Adigbo, Waheed Rafiq and Richard Howlett and uses technology used in today's smartphones to perform facial recognition - from photos stored on an internal SD memory card in the cane - and guide the blind person through GPS, also built into the cane. No further information has been released.
The XploR team has presented the "smart" cane to health experts in Luxembourg and France and is due to hold similar meetings in Germany later in 2015. Medical equipment companies have also shown interest.
The smart cane will guide the user to friends and acquaintances with voice instructions from a Bluetooth headset. The students conducted initial trials at the Beacon Centre for the Blind in the UK, where they will return to continue optimizing the XploR.
See another attempt at building a “smart cane”, by Indian Rohan Paul:
Source: tech.in.gr
