Development of Visual Substitute for Blind People

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The results obtained in this research are summarized as follows :(1)We have developed three types of compact real-time range finders which are available to act as the eyes of autonomous running vehicles and intelligent robots as well as blind people. These finders, although being constituted of stereo color CCD cameras and simple electronic circuits, can extract several color and bright regions from a scenery image. As a result, this fact made it possible to recognize successively 3-D information on the object surface. In the measurement, (a) a curved surface is firstly divided into small ones according to the difference in surface color and brightness and (b) the distances to the left- and right-hand-side positions of each surface are measured. It was confirmed that the developed devices are applicable to the surface measurements of planes with folded lines and corner edges and of a circular cylinder.(2)We have developed a Braille display, where several artificial rubber muscles are i … More nstalled and the trial tests have been made on feeding the electro-rheological fluid(ERF) into the muscle for its elongation. In order to make this feeding faster, the dynamic behavior of the ERF in the flow field should be clarified and some feeding method should be developed. In this research we have demonstrated that the response characteristics in the pipe are analyzed on the electric-fluid analogy and produced a pump for feeding the ERF In practice ERF was fed on this driving principle, and a Braille display composed of 8x8 touch points and its controlling device have been developed.(3)As a preliminary stage for manufacturing a guide robot for the blind, we have developed an autonomous running vehicle on which the range finder was mounted. This is equipped with the visual devices which proceed in real time the video signals from stereo color cameras and has the ability of fixing its eyes on color landmarks, recognizing the meanings of the marks and running on the route designated by the colors. The characteristics of this robot is that it has been provided with the functions of recognizing 3-D self positions and of following its master by being equipped with a controlling computer. The other characteristics of this system are that the real time characteristics and an economical system can be achieved even if the computer is uninstalled. Less