[accessibleimage] Fwd: [The vOICe] Indians' sonic map impresses Gates



Begin forwarded message:

From: Peter Meijer <feedback@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 4, 2006 4:17:56 AM EDT
To: seeingwithsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [The vOICe] Indians' sonic map impresses Gates
Reply-To: seeingwithsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi All,

For your information. Appended is an article from
yesterday's edition of The Hindu. Thank also to Pranav.

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm


Indians' sonic map impresses Gates.

By G. Ananthakrishnan.

The design will improve the quality of life of the
visually impaired.

Redmond: Watching a demonstration of visionary software
ideas that can transform health care at his Redmond
headquarters, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was
sufficiently impressed by the concept of a sonic map
presented by an Indian student team to help the blind,
to ask the accessibility group of Microsoft to take a
look at it.

"I have never seen something like this," he said, when
Deepak Jagdish, a student of the Dhirubhai Ambani
Institute of Information and Communication Technology
(DA-IICT), Gandhinagar, explained to him the navigation
and processing system that he and his team members were
now perfecting to improve the quality of life of visually
impaired people.

The DA-IICT team, made up of Deepak, Rahul Sawhney,
Shreyas Nangia and Mohit Gupta, has been working on the
sonic map, which it calls `Sonique' or `Dhwani, for the
Imagine Cup 2006 competition hosted by Microsoft. Their
software design can potentially help visually impaired
people "see" the environment around them, complete with
objects in a spatial sense.

Snapshot of surroundings.

The system, inspired by echolocation used by bats, is
designed to emit ultrasonic impulses generated by
proximity sensors that have a minimum range of five
metres and process the signals to create a `sonic
snapshot' of the surroundings.

Where there is no object, there is no feedback. Positive
signals bouncing off objects are conveyed via blue tooth
technology to a mobile device and translated in real time
into sound frequencies. These results are available to
the blind person through headphones connected to the
mobile.

The Indian students' entry is among those short-listed
for the global Imagine Cup finals to be held in August in
Agra, also involving over 70 teams in different
categories. The results will be announced in Delhi.

Accessing the mouse.

Among the promising spin-offs from the project is the
opportunity for blind people to use the computer mouse.
This can be achieved by giving the monitor screen `grid'
values that translate into sound. The variation in sound
is evident when the mouse is moved vertically and
horizontally. "The goal is to build an all-in-one
explorer for the blind, which will help them access all
programmes from a centralised navigation system on the
screen," explains Deepak, who was the sole representative
for his team at Redmond.

Other members of the team could not make it to the
presentation for Mr. Gates in the U.S. for various
reasons. Besides the Microsoft Chairman, Mr. Sanjay
Parthasarathy, corporate vice-president, and Mr. Joe
Wilson, group product manager, both from the developer
and platform evangelism group of Microsoft and other
senior executives also witnessed the demo.

The Imagine Cup this year saw about 68,000 students
register worldwide with a tally of 11,000 competing in
the event. The finalists vie for $125,000 in prize money
in the multi-category competition that encourages
talented young programmers showcase their ideas using
Microsoft programming platforms.

Other teams.

The Indian entry is built on the .Net compact framework
for software modules to connect to a central server and
the Windows Mobile 5.0 for the Sonique application.

Other teams that demonstrated their ideas to the
Microsoft Chairman were from the United Kingdom, the
U.S., Germany, Japan and South Korea.

"Amazingly, the world still has a shortage of great
engineers who write software. You would think we are
overwhelmed with great people because we get to do the
most fun work in the world, but somehow a lot of people
still don't recognise that. So your opportunity is very
strong because the need for your kind of skills certainly
exceeds the supply," Mr. Gates told the students,
reminding them that Microsoft has a "huge R and D
culture" and an allocation of $6 billion a year for the
activity.

Tablet PCs.

Giving an example of an idea flowing from that vision,
he talked of tablet PCs for students that would connect
wirelessly to the Internet and eliminate the need for
textbooks.

Speaking about the Indian team's experience in producing
a Sonique prototype, Deepak Jagdish said there was a two
to three week delay in importing some pieces of hardware,
such as the digital compass.

"We are improving the accuracy of the device all the time
in consultation with the National Association for the
Blind, Ahmedabad, and others. We hope to be ready 15 days
before the finals," he added optimistically.

Source URL:
http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/03/stories/2006070303511300.htm


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