Research

Researchers listed alphabetically by surname

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N

Professor Priya Narasimhan
ECE Department, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15217, USA.
Tel: +1 412 268 8801
Email: priya@cs.cmu.edu
Website: http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~trinetra

Current & recent projects

Trinetra
Co-workers: Patrick E. Lanigan, Aaron M. Paulos, Andrew W. Williams

The Sanskrit word trinetra refers to the powerful third eye of the Hindu god, Shiva. The third eye symbolizes ultimate knowledge and wisdom, and serves as a source of light and energy even when the other two eyes are engulfed in darkness. The Trinetra project aims to develop cost-effective assistive technologies to provide blind people with a greater degree of independence in their daily activies. The overall objective of the project is to improve the quality of life for the blind by harnessing the collective capability of diverse networked embedded devices to support navigation, grocery shopping, transportation, etc. To date, we have researched and developed a barcode-based solution to aid grocery shopping at the CMU campus convenience store, Entropy, and a cellphone-based solution for blind people to use transportation services such as the CMU campus shuttle.

Last updated: 02/05/2006

Dr Laxman Nayak
Centre for Applied Gerontology, Hayward Building, Selly Oak Hospital, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29 6JD, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 121 627 8266
Fax: +44 121 627 8304
Email: U.S.L.Nayak@bham.ac.uk
Web: www.bham.ac.uk/gerontology

Current & recent projects

Co-worker: Lee Priest

After spending a few years in designing aids and appliances for disabled people in New Zealand, Dr Nayak joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Birmingham as a Lecturer in Bioengineering.

During his stay with the Department of Geriatric Medicine, he designed and developed a measurement laboratory to assess disturbances of gait and balance in the elderly.

Further research work among the elderly has led to the establishment of the Centre for Applied Gerontology at the University of Birmingham. The Centre seeks to promote awareness of the needs of older people amongst designers by conducting research and disseminating its findings. Dr Nayak was one of the founder members of the Centre and as director, he is responsible for all research and academic activities of the Centre.

Completed Project: Project to identify problems older people and partially sighted people have in accessing information using websites.

Last updated: 11/9/2006

Dr Nurit Neustadt-Noy
Rehabilitation Services for Blind and Visually Impaired Persons, Netain 76870, Israel.
Tel: +972 3 966 4567
Fax: +972 3 966 8337
Email: nuritnoy@macam.ac.il

Current & recent projects

Consultation on environmental adaptation and improving accessibility to visually impaired persons.

Last updated: 11/11/2004

Dr Patricia Nelson
Room number 3.03, Department of Building, Engineering and Surveying, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 131 449 5111 ext 4652
Web: www.hw.ac.uk/

Current & recent projects

Psychophysics of vision and vision-related quality of life in an urban environment on the vision impaired population
Co-workers: Prof. P. Aspinall; R. Webb; C. O’Brien
The study is directed at improving the lighting design for those visually impaired people with glaucoma. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of vision loss in the world.

Last updated: 25/03/2002

Prof. Giuseppe Nicotra
ARCA Progetti SRL, Via Segai 8, Stallavena (Verona) 37020, Italy.
Tel: +39 45 8650549
Fax: +39 45 8650549
Email: nicotra@dodiesis.com

Current & recent projects

LAMBDA - Linear Access to Mathematics for Braille Device and Audiosynthesis
Co-workers: European Blind Union (France); Unione Italiana Dei Ciechi (Italy); Universite Paul Sabatier (France); University of York (UK); Centro Servizi Amministrativi Di Vicenza (Italy).
LAMBDA is a research project funded by the European Union – IST program with the objective of creating an integrated system for writing and reading mathematical texts for the use of blind students. Project web page: www.lambdaproject.org/ASP/index.aspx?IDMenuAPP=0
Project start date: 01/09/2002
Project end date: 31/08/2005

PLAY 2- SW for: storage of various music input, conversion of different Braille syntax into sound, graphic, Braille output and Telematics access
Co-workers: Nadine Baptist (Université Paul Sabatier, France), Maurizio Alafaci (UIC, Italian Union for the Blind)
PLAY2 is aimed at offering the blind an easy approach to the IT world, by also offering the opportunity of exchanging information with sighted users. PC tools are meant to solve several problems met by the blind. An easy system to compose music Braille scores, by converting them from most codes used by such commercial programs as Coda Music's Finale is provided. Exchanging scores converted in Braille Music Code (BMC) among blind users is another remarkable opportunity; PLAY2 also can successfully meet the need of blind musicians, who are complaining that Braille scores are little available in libraries, and too long is taken to get texts, because they can be distributed as raised hard copies and by conventional mail only. IT can drastically help reduce the high costs of scores, especially when drafting has to be commissioned, and start a service for exchanging music texts among libraries and from these to users. See www.dodiesis.com for more information.
Project start date: 01/01/97
Project end date: 31/12/2003

Last updated: 02/03/2004

Tatsuo Nishizawa
Plextor/Shinano Kenshi, 6-15-26 Chuo, Ueda 386-0012, Japan.
Tel: +81 268 28 8050
Fax: +81 268 21 0885
Web: www.skcj.co.jp

Current & recent projects

The Development of a Tactile Sensor System for Reading Braille
This tactile sensor system consists of five parts. The first one is an analogue front-end; it reads the amplitude of the waveform of the PVDF film sensor while suppressing noise elements. The second part is analogue to digital conversion. The third part is digital signal processing, this part separates the input waveform by corresponding each Braille character, then analyzes the features of each characters. The fourth part is determination, comparing each character with a database. The last one is language recognition, the determination results are just tactile layout information of each Braille character, these language recognition parts translate to the ASCII character code.
The sensor for Braille reading is worn on the finger. The sensor is made with a single PVDF film and rubber sponge. To scan the Braille, the user traces the sensor over the Braille just as people who read Braille do with their own fingers. In addition, the user can feel the location of the Braille marks through the sensor.

Last updated: 01/03/2004

John Nissen
Cloudworld Ltd, Thames Bank, Chiswick Mall, London W4 2PR, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 845 458 3944 (Local rate in the UK)
Fax: +44 20 8742 8715
Email: jn@cloudworld.co.uk
Web: www.cloudworld.co.uk

Current & recent projects

Wrist-worn computer/organiser or 'PAD' (personal accessor device) with access to phone (PSTN or mobile), ATMs, and other public systems/services - and with a multimodal user interface (including tactile input/output) designed to make it usable by somebody of any age or with any disability.

SILC: Supporting Independently Living Citizens (EU funded R&D Project IST-2000-27524)
The main objective of the SILC-project is to develop an innovative alarm system to increase safety and independence of elderly and disabled citizens. In contrast to existing alarms SILC will make use of integrated biometric sensors to trigger the alarm in critical situations. Cloudworld is responsible for the user interface, as part of the system architecture of the SILC watch. Cloudworld is also responsible for PDA aspects, i.e. the organiser functions of the watch.

Last updated: 13/10/2003

Dr. Mark Nitzberg, PhD
President, Co-founder and Director, Principal Investigator, The Blindsight Corporation, 201 Broadway, 5th Floor, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, United States of America.
Tel/Fax: +1 617 812 2673
Email: info@blindsight.com
Web: site.yahoo.net/blindsight/index.html

Current & recent projects

Smart Telescope
The goal of the Smart Telescope project is to aid visually impaired persons in everyday tasks such as travel, navigation, and social interactions. This includes assistance with tasks such as finding signs and faces, recognizing and interpreting them, and tracking them as they move.
The Smart Telescope will use a small digital camera for input and will send output to either a digital monocular or bioptic display, possibly supplemented with audio. Computer vision algorithms will detect regions of interest in the image where targets are likely to be and will then magnify and enhance these targets so that users can interpret them, all while tracking the relative locations of these targets.

Sign Finder
The goal of the Sign Finder project is to enable visually impaired persons to read street signs and name plates within the context of a crowded city scene. The Sign Finder is worn around the neck like a pendant and will read aloud a certain class of signs within the field of view of its camera, such as bus stops or street signs.

Display Reader
The Display Reader project's goal is to produce a custom hardware and software solution that reads LED and LCD displays aloud.
The current Display Reader consists of a purpose-built hand-held device with a digital camera and audio speaker. The device software can identify digits on an arbitrary LED display. The user aims the device in the direction of a display and pushes the button to capture a digital image of the display. The device then reads the digits aloud through the speaker.
The next software revision will add the ability to interpret LCD displays, expanding its applicability to a wider range of devices including cellular phones, fax machines, and VCRs.

Last updated: 02/03/2004

Bart Noë
Technologie & Intergratie, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
Tel: +32 9 264 3391
Fax: +32 9 264 3594
Email: noe@tni.be
Web: www.tni.be

Current & recent projects

Technologie & Integratie will now start exploiting the results of this completed project.

Talking Barcodes
Co-worker: Prof Keith Osman
Persons with reading difficulties often gain information from written texts through a friend, a companion, or a stranger who may be on hand. An easy means of accessing information without the need for additional human intervention is seen as an important step in providing reading impaired citizens with greater freedom of activity. The programme will use 2D barcodes to encapsulate the textual parts of documents and packaging materials and the small 2D barcode will be printed in addition to the printed words. A specially designed handheld unit containing both a scanner head to decode the barcode and a low power speech synthesiser with then convert the barcode data into audible speech for the end-user.
Project start date: 01/01/2001
Project end date: 01/04/2003

Last updated: 03/09/2003

Christopher Norman
Mdi, West House, 23 Berwick Road, Marlow SL7 3AR, United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 1628 488911
Fax: +44 1628 485485
Email: mdi@dial.pipex.com
Web: www.vocation.co.uk

Current & recent projects

Tak 01
Co-worker: Sebastian de la Hamayde
Development of universal tactile symbols within the living environment for visually disabled persons.
Project start date: 01/01/96
Project end date: 31/01/99

Tak 02
Co-worker: Sebastian de la Hamayde
Development of portable optical scanner communicator for visually impaired persons.
Project start date: 01/01/98
Project end date: 31/01/99

Last updated: