Blind Travellers “See” With Ease

Washington DC is a place full of spectacular sights. Everyone who visits will be flabbergasted with the busy city. Now blind travellers to the city may have expected to immune to the sights, but technology is making it possible for them to have an amazing experience there. The L’Enfant Plaza transit station is a busy, noisy junction with three levels and five different Metro lines converging.

Not exactly the kind of place a blind traveller would be comfortable navigating all on his own. That’s what you can be excused for thinking because you don’t know about the  cooperative robots Aaron Steinfeld, NSF-funded robotic scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and his team are building.

The job of the co-robots is to empower people with disabilities to safely travel and navigate unfamiliar environments. Given the scope of area and constantly changing obstacles in an area such as the station, this is going to be a huge undertaking for the team.

Essentially they hope to be able to give the person a good idea of where they are located, how they can get to where they need to be, and not making the blind person feel as awkward as they would have if they were dealing with areal person in place of a robot. This is one science project that’s really going to make a difference.