NYT/Reuters: "Seeing Machine" Offers Legally Blind a View of World

[DeepModem Mom]

"Seeing Machine" Offers Legally Blind a View of World
By REUTERS
Published: June 12, 2006

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A legally blind poet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has designed a ''seeing machine'' that allows people with limited vision to see faces of friends, read or study the layouts of buildings they intend to visit.

The device, which MIT estimates costs about $4,000 (2,100 pounds) to manufacture, plugs into a personal computer and uses light-emitting diodes to project selected images into a person's eye, allowing visually impaired users to see words or pictures.

"The advantage of this kind of display is there's no extraneous stuff in your peripheral vision that gets in the way,'' Elizabeth Goldring, who has published three volumes of poetry, said in an interview. "The image gets projected right onto the retina.''

The device, which Goldring calls a "seeing machine,'' is housed in a box that measures about 12 inches by 6 inches by 6 inches.

The seeing machine is not wearable and would not allow one to easily navigate through a crowded, unfamiliar space. But it helps a user study a color image, such as printed words, pictures of people or room layouts. It only works for people with some living retina cells and a completely blind person would not be able to use the device....

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-science-sight.html

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. May not be Geordi's VISOR, but that day may come.

[defiant1]

7. LoL....

That visor kicked ass.

d1

[whatwasthequestion]

2. Beautiful

I love science and human ingenuity and will!

[DeepModem Mom]

3. A lovely post, whatwasthequestion -- welcome to DU!

[oneold1-4u]

4. Hey!

Welcome, and all can see; there are some with real "CHARITY" in the works!

[geomon666]

5. Stupid question.

Is there an illegally blind?

[Javaman]

6. yes, there is...

not being a doctor and only having a friend that was legally blind, his eyes were so bad that he had to use a cane. He even qualified for a dog.

His form of blindness was a genetic disorder. His eyesight degraded over time.