A wearable assistance system for blind or partially sighted swimmers has been developed by a group of students, as part of the 7th Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition of Junior Achievement Greece (JA Greece).
What is included in the system and how does it work?
The system includes a swimming cap with glasses, and is intended to help swimmers with their orientation in a swimming pool. The device has a set of sensors on the swimming cap that notifies the swimmer about their orientation in the pool and arrival at the end of the route for the turn or the finish.
Additionally, the system includes a Bluetooth headset that can be connected to a mobile device to let the swimmer know about their timing and statistics during the swim.
The device uses a gyroscope for orientation and an accelerometer for the timing of the route using a mobile internet of things type application, giving the swimmer feedback of the race.
The students, who are also members of the Swim.me team that promotes the sport of swimming around Greece, wanted to develop this innovative idea in order to encourage visually impaired people of all ages, amateurs and children, to get involved with swimming, regardless of the challenges that they might face.
Rania Vlachou, student of Management Science and Technology at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) and member of Swim.me, first came up with the idea of the device, and along with a strong team of participants, including Ifigenia Vasilaki and Anastasios Karamoutis from AUEB, and Dimitris Lambros and Vangelis Georgakilas from NTUA, the blueprints of the system came to life.
Was there any feedback from the blindness community?
The group of students also had the opportunity to receive feedback, as they presented their project to Paralympian and World Champion swimmer Charalambos Taiganidis, who was excited with the idea.
“It was very important for us to get validation from such a renowned athlete, who is one of the people directly concerned with the device, and he not only approved it, but also gave us feedback and tips on how to continue and make further use of the project,” Panagiota Dedousi said.
The system is the second big project for visually impaired people that has been developed by Greek students, as the previous innovation, called “Smart Vision” and created by middle-school students, also received global recognition and praise from the international scientific community. Smart Vision is designed to help blind people in their daily shopping activities and includes a device that recognizes product labels in a supermarket and can “read” to the user the basic information of the label, such as the expiration date or ingredients.
The JA Greece competition is part of the JA Start-up and JA Europe programmes, in which more than 300 Universities across Europe and 15,000 students participate each year. These initiatives give the opportunity to students aged 18-30 to develop their own entrepreneurship idea and encourages them to use their skills in various areas of a business.
Is the device ready for competition?
The Greek team is currently in the process of making the whole swimming cap device waterproof and ready to use, and will represent Greece in the Pan-European JA competition, which will take place online in Lithuania, later in 2021.
