Blind and Visually Impaired Community
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What could a robot do for people concerned with visual impairment? (self.Blind)
submitted by Korydween
Hi everyone!
I am a researcher in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in a Swedish University, and I am currently investigating the potential use of robots and AI systems for visually impaired persons. Here is my question: if you are concerned by visual impairment, whether it is you, a relative or people with whom you work, what could a robot or an artificially intelligent system in general do for you?
My goal is to collect ideas from the simplest one to the craziest one, whether it concerns the home, the workplace, unfamiliar environments... so don't wonder if it is possible or not yet, if you have any idea of something you would really love to have that involves robots or artificial intelligence, your insight will be extremely useful.
I can unfortunately not promise to keep you updated about the advancement of this project since it is at a very preliminary stage and I am not sure myself where it will go, but if it happens that it goes somewhere, I will certainly let you know. Only if you are interested of course.
Thanks in advance!
I am a researcher in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in a Swedish University, and I am currently investigating the potential use of robots and AI systems for visually impaired persons. Here is my question: if you are concerned by visual impairment, whether it is you, a relative or people with whom you work, what could a robot or an artificially intelligent system in general do for you?
My goal is to collect ideas from the simplest one to the craziest one, whether it concerns the home, the workplace, unfamiliar environments... so don't wonder if it is possible or not yet, if you have any idea of something you would really love to have that involves robots or artificial intelligence, your insight will be extremely useful.
I can unfortunately not promise to keep you updated about the advancement of this project since it is at a very preliminary stage and I am not sure myself where it will go, but if it happens that it goes somewhere, I will certainly let you know. Only if you are interested of course.
Thanks in advance!
Warthil 3 points 5y ago
Make popcorn
LanceThunder 3 points 5y ago
right now the current state of screen-readers is pretty primitive. if a document doesn't have really good formatting it becomes inaccessible as screen readers wont be able to interpret the information properly. this causes a couple of problems.
1) it takes a reasonably high level of technical expertise to recognize and avoid accessibility issues when creating/updating documents. this means that a lot of people just can't make their docs accessible because they don't know where to start.
2) there is a huge backlog of older documents out there that are completely inaccessible because they were created before accessibility was something large organizations thought about. even now there are tons of documents being created that are not accessible. its nearly impossible for people to go back and correct all these files.
if a robust AI was created that could make sense of documents that were not formatted with accessibility in mind it would open up all sorts of new information to the blind. it would also be a very valuable technology since many governments have new accessibility laws in place. its going to cost billions to have humans make all these docs accessible but if an AI could do it, that would be a big time/money saver for them.
my other idea would be robotic seeing eye dogs. you could probably make a robot that could do many of the things a seeing eye dog could do and more.
1) it takes a reasonably high level of technical expertise to recognize and avoid accessibility issues when creating/updating documents. this means that a lot of people just can't make their docs accessible because they don't know where to start.
2) there is a huge backlog of older documents out there that are completely inaccessible because they were created before accessibility was something large organizations thought about. even now there are tons of documents being created that are not accessible. its nearly impossible for people to go back and correct all these files.
if a robust AI was created that could make sense of documents that were not formatted with accessibility in mind it would open up all sorts of new information to the blind. it would also be a very valuable technology since many governments have new accessibility laws in place. its going to cost billions to have humans make all these docs accessible but if an AI could do it, that would be a big time/money saver for them.
my other idea would be robotic seeing eye dogs. you could probably make a robot that could do many of the things a seeing eye dog could do and more.
96tears 2 points 5y ago
I have to agree. Also what is the best OCR or app out there because I don't have it and I don't think there is one that can translate information in grids, tables, and formulas that well.
Korydween [OP] 1 points 5y ago
Thanks a lot for your input. I would never have thought about the screen-readers problems. I know accessibility was not perfect yet, but I didn't think it was still so bad. I will definitely note it.
The robotic seeing eye dogs was obviously my first idea, and the most "common one" in the field. Some projects already exist for this, but there is obviously a lot of room for improvement. On this topic, I was also wondering the following: do you think it would be considered useful to have a guiding robots that would be able to "explain" to their user why they are stopping, where they are currently, what is happening around, etc. I would believe it might increase the users comfort and understanding of the surrounding environment, and maybe even his/her acceptance of the robot, but I am not sure if this is needed information or if the user can already infer it by him/herself using his/her other senses.
The robotic seeing eye dogs was obviously my first idea, and the most "common one" in the field. Some projects already exist for this, but there is obviously a lot of room for improvement. On this topic, I was also wondering the following: do you think it would be considered useful to have a guiding robots that would be able to "explain" to their user why they are stopping, where they are currently, what is happening around, etc. I would believe it might increase the users comfort and understanding of the surrounding environment, and maybe even his/her acceptance of the robot, but I am not sure if this is needed information or if the user can already infer it by him/herself using his/her other senses.
LanceThunder 1 points 5y ago
not only would those ideas be an improvement, it would be really easy to implement. but i feel that these questions should be answered by a blind person. i am just a person who spends a lot of time trying to push for greater accessibility.
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