Smart Cane Gives the Blind Freedom to Explore
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2020
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Today, there are an estimated 10 million Americans who are either blind or visually impaired and 250 million people worldwide, many of whom use canes.
But the standard “long canes” can’t detect obstacles above the waist, like low-hanging branches, nor can they help a visually impaired person find their way somewhere new.
So a company called WeWALK has made it their mission to completely revolutionize the traditional white cane’s functionality, including adding ultrasonic sensors and GPS navigation.
This smart cane has the power to help millions of people independently navigate the world, without a sighted guide or a seeing eye dog, and without fearing for their safety.
See the full article on WeWalk's smart cane for the blind, here: www.freethink.com/videos/smar...
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What other applications could be made with this tech?
Been racking my head about that.
I think if visually impaired people could have glasses with built-in cameras, something like VR googles (But smarter), and connected to the cane, this will blow up the cane's functionality, as it will increase the minute details of the environment and give suggestions that will be helpful.
Another thing will be fitting it with an emergency system that will help the visually impaired get help or navigate through dangers
The smart penis for people with small cocks it can detect the size of a vagina then it will expand to fit properly 🤪
Well it seems like it's functionality could be improved via the use of headphones which give a unique tone which corresponds to the height of an obstruction within a certain range. I don't know if the ear could distinguish enough simultaneous tones to make it work, but for instance you could have a 5 foot range, scanned in a narrow vertical plane, at the edge of which every inch is segmented so near the ground obstructions would give low tones and higher ones for higher obstructions. A specific example being a waist high wall starting in front of you and extending left. A sweep from left to right would yield the lower half of tones simultaneously played with increasing volume until past the wall when all tones would stop(besides maybe a low baseline static to indicate that the ground does not drop going forward). Again, I don't know if the human ear is adept enough for it, but it seems like you could build a rich enough picture for even some object identification. This should all be possible using consumer grade, close range radar and I can't imagine the processing being too intense for a modern single board computer, possibly just a microcontroller.
@@AtlasReburdenedSo you want to give a blind person, who uses their ears to navigate, a pair of headphones 🤔
Love seeing technology used for the betterment of society.
This tech costs them about 100£ but then selling it for 600£ some visually sighted people and they cant afford it. What a point
this is the spirit of assistive technology!!!
Maybe.
If you can integrate this solution on shoes....that s can be a real dream. Good job for your project😘👍👍😇😁 love from BELGIUM
As a blind person myself I think it is an awesome concept, but... sometimes this new accessibility technology is more of a hassle and not practical. For example, I have a sonar watch that does The same thing With haptic feedback And while it was a great idea it was just not practical in use. There is a reason that blind people still just use a stick basically or a guide dog like myself. With my earbuds in and my guide dog I am set. Still an awesome idea.
I do have a mobile app concept to make some sports such as riding a dirt bike accessible for the blind but can’t find someone to help with getting it started due to funding. Wish you guys could maybe help in some way.
If u r blind, how did u write this
Chew07 it’s a screen reader called voice over. I have videos on my channel about it
@@JustinHollandFitness ahh, ok
Thanks for commenting! Super valuable to have your perspective, and great youtube channel!
Helping make sports more accessible to the blind sounds fascinating. We have an online forum where people can share ideas and such--you might be able to find someone to help get it started, set up a crowdfunding campaign, etc. there: facebook.com/groups/freethinkforum/ . If you are able to get it going, it sounds like something we'd love to cover!
Freethink thank you for the reply! I will definitely check that out, I have talked to several app developers and it is definitely possible to complete but a little pricey and I think crowdfunding would probably be the best way to go about it. My mind is always racing and thinking of new or better ways to live life. I think it is important to keep pushing forward with innovations such as this one in order to make it a better life for people with challenges and in general.
Thanks brothers
Funny I came up with this concept when I was at school aged 13 (55 years ago) I found when walking home I could make a clicking sound or a blowing sound and the returned echo gave me the texture of the wall I was walking near. Today I tried AI chatGPT4 with this concept and a few new ones and it came up with your cane concept. Just took 55 years to happen, its sad that this has taken so long to benefit the blind community. I wish I could have done more also as a Electronics and Software developer, having to designed useless tech fluff for fortune 500 companies!
It is about time that there is a new device that is assessible to the visually impaired.
Such a sighted thing to say!
I love my came with a rolling ball tip.
This is amazing great work guysssssssssss
Glad you liked it too, thanks for watching!
@@freethink I really did Thank you
Huge respect 🙌🙌
Cheers, thanks for your kind thoughts!
Do they have payment plans for ppl whom are blind and live on a fixed income ?
How can i buy
Hi what abut pric
Visually impaired here. Please dont brand my mobility aid as "it sucks". Its pretty effective. Adverts like this make life difficult for me, I've already been tasked by sighted people about "not getting one of those tech canes" after I walked into them. This has happened to visually impaired/blind friends too now. By all means promote your product as special or extra but please make it very clear there is nothing wrong with standard mobility canes.
Its marketing. But still there are some things where normal mobility canes are not that great. For example if you walk over a crosswalk, want to find a door, stairs etc. Also you cant see whats like 5 meter in front of you. So you could just walk straight to a wall without knowing it.
Also its nice if the good old mobility cane works well for you. But maybe for someone else it does not.
I also have a 'tech cane' called blindbot an it just improves the normal cane via a camera, a neural network, speaker and a pointer that points in the direction of the sidewalk, crosswalk, door, stairs, ... also if there is a obstacle it points around it. And you can feel the pointer by resting your thumb on it.
And if you want you can still use it as a normal blind cane. But some blind testpersons really liked that they dont have to run in a desk to know that there is a deskt in order to avoid it. They can just feel via the pointer that there is an obstacle and can go around it.
I agree, it felt so agresive from the beginning
@@qwertz4035You sound like you're either sighted, or if you're vi, new at it. Even being legally blind, I can tell you if you're running into a desk, you're not using a cane properly. And using sound, you can quite often find stares.
I depend on my trusty analog white cane. This might be fun to play around with, but I would never be dependent on a tool that can glitch, lose power, etc. Like any “helpful” tech for the blind, you have to be rich to afford the gadgets.
A normal cane would be easier for self-defense anyway
If the cane breaks you could just use it as a normal analog cane
I am legally blind and I use a power chair. I do have some vision but I do have some problems sometimes seeing certain drop-offs? There was a device that I once heard of called a Mowat Sensor that sends out radio waves and is like the updated version of a cane. The thing is that with my power chair and my tray I can't use a cane and it would be nice if there was an app that I could put on my Android smartphone that all I would need to do is point my camera to a place that I think may have a drop-off and it would tell me if there is a drop-off or if there may be a safe place to roll off and how steep it would be?
Dropoffs are somewhat difficult to detect with a single camera like in a Smartphone. We have a blind cane with a single camera that can detect stairs, steps and so on. But sometimes if you look to a dropoff from the top, you cant really see it. Sometimes even as a seeing person that is not that wake. It also gives a direction to where it is best to walk. We can also put that software onto a Smartphone or even an electric wheelchair. (Actually we were talking to a electic wheelchair developer who was interested. His wheelchair can also climb stairs.) But for your purpose I think that dedicated hardware would be the best/most reliable. For example a lidar sensor or two cameras pointing in the same direction. But I dont know if someone did such thing already.
Problem is a camera can't see in 3dD. And there are times it can't detect a drop. Wish I had a cane as a kid.
I want to buy. But i dont know how to buy it.
What rupees sir please tell
Is it possible to become blind if you stay on the electronics to long? And if so how do we prevent that?
Give your eyes a rest every 20 minutes. Use non preservative eye drops every hour. Best thing is to stay off of electronics.
this cane doesn´t suck at all. again a solution in want of a problem. For a blind cane user this doesn´t solve major mobility issues.
Where can I buy this?
Wish, or Temu?😊
Can you please tell where this smart cane is available?
This new white cane looks difficult to use and I will use trusty white cane to help me to get around edmonton and on the buses and train when I work on getting my indepence back
Great but too expensive majority Of blind people cannot afford it
I need you help plz
This tech is why I decided to get a degree is Biological Engineering but school/life suck my passion out of me and now I'm stumbling through life trying to find my purpose 😔. I know this is random, lol.
you have no purpose. you make your own purpose in life. idk if that helps but i was stumped on that question & lost in life for a long while & chasing goals instead of living in the present and making the most of every moment... it is possible to acquire just about anything but time. spend your time doing what you love and your purpose will come to you. i was chasing ghosts until somebody told me this as well and it really shifted my perspective. or another perspective- you can think of it like- you have no purpose so don't stress about having to do or be anything and just live life as you wish on your own standards. i know im 3 years late to comment but i hope you are doing well in life friend 💟
@xtckels No, it was creepy how much I needed an answer to this question now because 3 years later, I am still chasing things/status instead of just living in the moment doing what brings me joy.
@@anonymous0437 Why not do both? Chase things but have fun in the chase.
nah, my white cane doesnt "suck". your video does.
❤❤
Wow
That was our reaction too when we learned about it :)
@@freethink It's cool that people still care about people with disabilities
You had every opportunity to call this the "Staff of Truth," and you betrayed my hopes.
BOO. Stop hating on the cane. I have used this product with multiple clients. It is not effective and does not increase client safety. I wouldn't write critical comments if your time did not hate on the original cane. That is incredibly unhelpful
Yeah, that rubbed me the wrong way too. Starting out by saying that the cane "sucks" and how it's "essentially just a stick" feels ignorant. There's a REASON blind and visually impaired people have been using this cane for 100 years. If it isn't broken, it doesn't need to be fixed.
Pardon the godawfully appropriate pun, but you two are completely failing to see the potential benefits that something like this can introduce.
It literally integrates perfectly with the existing cane, in such a way that is even if every single introduced feature on it fails, at least WeWalk is still an even more comfortable tool than the original is to hold, Saying that even a partially functioning WeWalk is worse is saying the introduction of handlebar covers made bicycle riding as a whole, an infinitely harder and less pleasurable experience.
👌👌
Based on how blind animals typically move, that's certainly not enough, but a rather small step in the right direction.
The stick design isn't that far off though, most blind creatures live in caves and are covered in full body whiskers in order to see. Same would work fir humans, but it'd be an extremely striking and expensive thing to wear/make. Echolocation also works, but as easy as some make it look, it's certainly not simple.
Hopefully with the advancement of neural interfaces we van just give these people new eyes. But unfortunately they'll have to make do with biology for the most part as the technology isn't available enough to reach most.
I've seen haptic tongue contact machines do this though, really weird. But it works due to the dense nerve network there.
You told me nothing of how it works very little demonstration I need clarity walking for me is challenging crossing street is a challenge I stay home a lot I run into poles overhang work signs I need something that will alert me that I'm getting close so tired of running into things my greatest Fred is being ran over I tripped right in the middle of the most busiest street fell just inches in front of a car thank God he wasn't moving fast ad they usually do I pray I can get one that will allow me some freedom I live right next to a park and can't walk the track 😞 your promo has definitely ended so I'm out of luck.
Looks bulky and a pain to hold.