Ideas
Partners
Consultants
Calls
EU Projects
Blog NEW
- Europe towards City Innovation Hubs
  
  Written by Matteo Satta EU funding has always helped cities support their innovation processes, particularly on digital transformation and environment, but the approach is now moving toward a new ambitious […]
- Mistakes that Cities Should Be Avoiding in EU Projects
  
  By Matteo Satta Nowadays, we are seeing an increasing trend of people requesting to lower taxes and, as a result, public budgets. This leads many cities to try to find […]
- How a city can boost your Smart City project
  
  By Matteo Satta The commission has been heavily investing in pilot Smart City projects for a long time, but you may often have R&D or innovation projects pretending to have […]
- How to involve a city in your project? Here are a few tips.
  
  Article written by Matteo Satta (Smart) City projects are more and more funded by the European Commission, but consortia often struggle to get cities on board or really engage them. […]
- >> See all posts
Log In Sign Up

Want to see this project on homepage?
Propose a Picture

Natural sense of vision through acoustics and haptics (Sound of Vision)
Start date: Jan 1, 2015, End date: Dec 31, 2017 PROJECT FINISHED

Sound of Vision (Vision restoration through sound and haptics) will design, implement and validate an original non-invasive hardware and software system to assist visually impaired people by creating and conveying an auditory representation of the surrounding environment. This representation will be created, updated and delivered to a blind person continuously and in real time. This system will help visually impaired people in any kind of environment (indoor/outdoor), without the need for predefined tags/sensors located in the surroundings.The process of assisting visually impaired people proposed by Sound of Vision consists of a series of repetitive steps. The first step uses hardware and software for generating a 3D representation of the surrounding environment. In the second step, objects are identified within the 3D model and the information is then transformed into 3D sound and haptics sources. In the last step, all the 3D sound and haptics sources are combined and conveyed to the user, using specialized wearable hardware and algorithms.A functional prototype will be developed, followed by experimental validations and subsequent improvements, according to the feedback provided by visually impaired people, training specialists and neurologists. The product thus obtained will be sold as a hardware and software system, as well as some training courses that will help blind people use the system.The consortium has the necessary complementary competences to design and develop the proposed system, to test the prototype, establish training protocols and also to commercialize the system as an intuitive and accessible final product.Sound of Vision is a concept that goes beyond the state of the art of the visual sensory substitution systems, having the potential to become an affordable commercial product that will actually help blind people. This system can have an impressive social impact, improving the lifestyle of blind people, and also of their families and friends, on which they would otherwise depend.Free keywords (updated):Visual impairments; brain-computer interface (BCI); Neuroplasticity; Psychophysics; audio/video processing; wearable assistive devices; sonification; sound localization; haptic space perception.