[accessibleimage] Re: Mental synthesis of images

Hi John and all,

Yes, I think it is quite good that our respective approaches
share compatible mapping principles, such that users who master
one tool can reuse their experience with another tool based
on the same mapping principles. So I'd like to think that our
work is complementary, and I'll gladly believe that your tools
are easier to use for the tasks that you target. My ambition
lies more in the general vision field, which is exceedingly
challenging and at times frustrating for developer and users
alike, but we are making steady progress now with a lot of
interest from neuroscience research. However, we still do not
have a clear picture of how proficient users can get after,
say, a year of daily use with a head-mounted camera. Braille
of course also once started with similar uncertainties, and
we just have to try to find out what can really be achieved,
or where users get stuck. There must be an acceptable balance
between the significant user effort and any results obtained.

Leslie Kay indeed also has great technology with his KASPA
(formerly SonicGuide) sonar devices, like you indicate. You
and I are physicists, but perhaps it should be emphasized
here that however powerful and useful KASPA/SonicGuide may
be, being a sonar appraoch it does not provide any visual
information whatsoever. Last October, at the World Congress
on Blind Navigation Technologies, hosted at NFB's Jernigan
Institute in Baltimore, Leslie Kay made the following research
proposal (and I would be supportive of that): "Using both
KASPASCAN and vOICe systems determine what further technology 
development is needed to optimize the use of either or both
systems. Design a series of tasks that will show the extent
to which the object space is perceived and comprehended and
to carry out psychophysical experiment using trained subjects.
We need to know what are the relative merits the two systems".

The various proposals presented at this recent conference
can be read online at the URL

   http://www1.wayfinding.net/iibnNECtextproposal.htm

Best wishes,

Peter Meijer


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

John Gardner wrote:
> Hello Peter.  I have been aware of your VOICe work for a number of
> years and find it both fascinating and frustrating.I would describe
> VOICe as a generalization of the AGC tone graphing method, or maybe
> AGC as a special case of VOICe.  I'm sure you also know of the
> wonderful technology introduced many years ago by Prof. Kay in New
> Zealand that is in some sense a further generalization of VOICe.  The
> Kay technology is packaged in a head-mounted unit that is available
> as a commercial product, but my fuzzy brain cannot recall its
> name.  I'm sure some list members will know this fascinating
> product.  It has been used in Japan for children who became so
> proficient at seeing with sound that they could play softball.  No kidding.
> 
> The AGC tone plotting technology seems to be extremely intuitive.  In
> our original testing, we found that just a few minutes
> familiarization was enough for most people to be able to "read" a
> graph quite accurately with the audio tone plot.  There has been at
> least one other study (by Yu and Brewster in Glasgow) that confirm
> our findings - in fact extend them to show that audio tone plots are
> more quantitative than graphs read haptically or even on a tactile
> copy.  Quite surprising really.
> 
> Unfortunately both VOICe and the Kay technology are not so intuitive,
> and it does take a long familiarization time to learn them.  So in
> many ways the reasons they are not more widely used undoubtedly arise
> from the same human frailties that get in the way of learning
> braille.  Very few people, myself included, have the patience and
> drive to learn braille as adults.  Chris is an admirable exception.
> 
> I'm sure you also know about my efforts to bring access to 2d
> information with the IVEO technology.  IVEO is not as quick and easy
> as VOICe, but it provides quite a bit more information and, most
> importantly, is something that most blind people can use almost
> immediately "out of the box".  I wish it was as quick and as
> inexpensive as VOICe.
> 
> Thanks for opening this thread Peter.  I really think people on this
> list will enjoy knowing about audio representations of 2d pictures.
> 
> John
> 
> At 05:38 AM 1/10/2006, blindfold@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
>> Hi Chris,
>>
>> Thank you for posting these interesting notes about
>> generating images in your mind. This of course lies
>> at the heart of The vOICe approach where arbitrary
>> image information is provided via sound, and it is
>> left to the brain to try and learn to (re)synthesize
>> the original visual view.
>>
>> I wonder, given what you say about John's AGC, how
>> well can you mentally "see" (visualize) a view such
>> as in the sound file (direct URL to short wav sample
>> follows, so set your media player to auto-repeat)
>>
>>    http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voiscopebw.wav
>>
>> or the slowed down sample
>>
>>    http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voiscopebw2.wav
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Peter Meijer
>>
>>
>> Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
>> http://www.seeingwithsound.com/intro.htm
> 
> 
> John A. Gardner
> Professor and Director, Science Access Project
> Department of Physics
> Oregon State University
> Corvallis, OR 97331
> tel: (541) 737 3278
> FAX: (541) 737 1683
>     SAP URL: http://dots.physics.orst.edu/

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