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#**A touchable tablet to guide the visually impaired** | [1:43]

**Video by École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)**


*Video opens with tech music, and the logo EPFL | News*

[00:02]
*The scene changes to show the device:*

*The tablet is 2 inches thick, with a face roughly the size of an iPad. It's face appears to be made of a white material similar to plastic, with a matrix of 16 by 12 round metal dots that raise and lower from the surface while in use.*

*It is very barebones and utilitarian, with exposed electronic parts and a visible interior.*

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[00:05]

*Scene cuts to a man - titled as Herbert Shea, Microsystems for Space Technologies Laboratory*

We've developed a configurable, portable, wireless tablet that can quickly provide graphical information to blind users. This new device can be used for gaming, for education, and, for instance, for navigations. for navigation applications, we raise and lower pins so the user can explore with the sense of fine touch a map of his surroundings. The user can thus identify doors, exits, free seats at a table, streets, and navigate in an autonomous fashion.


[00:30]

*scene cuts to a blind man exiting a train; he is speaking French*

[English subtitles]:Visually impaired people currently use audio GPS to move about.

*Man navigates stairs, then is seen walking down a sidewalk*

For example, the GPS tells you to "turn right after 300 meters," like in a car.

[00:38]

*Cut to man facing the camera, titled as Denis Maret, Volunteer*

But we have no spatial reference to confirm this; we can only follow the indication. With the tablet, we could get additional information. If I hear that there is a roundabout on my right, I could check this information on the tablet to make sure I am at the right place.

*Scene cuts to view the tablet device again, and shows the pins raised in the center and around the edges, to show a sort of roundabout* [transcriber's note] the pins are laid out in a grid, so the roundabout looks somewhat square.

I think that would be really helpful.

[00:59]

Each pin is connected to a tiny magnet, and the magnet is pushed up and down by sending pulses of current through coils. The magnets latch in the up and down position allowing any configuration to be held indefinitely with no power consumption. In the future we're extending the concept to normally sighted users by making the device flexible, this allows us to make gloves and sleeves for virtual reality and augmented reality applications, allowing the users to feel what they're interacting with.

[01:29]

*Tech music plays, credits come on screen*

**EPFL | News**

Herbert Shea

>Microsystems for Space Technologies Laboratory

Denis Maret

>Volunteer

Journalists:

>Laure-Anne Pessina, Marc Delachaux, Olivier Porchet

[EPFL - MEDIACOM - 2017]


**[END OF VIDEO]**

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Edit: much improved tablet description thanks to u/captcoe