Chieko Asakawa, a Japanese doctor and inventor, is developing a new technology that will aid visually impaired individuals. Her passion for advancing technology for the visually impaired started when Asakawa had a swimming pool accident when she was 14 which caused her blindness. She is now working with other companies to improve the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help people live a normal life.
When Asakawa started working on developing artificial intelligence, she did not have any technology to assist her impairment. The hardships that she endured made her do more in improving technology for the blind.
Her understanding in computer science focused on blind people worked with IBM and earned a doctorate. Dr. Asakawa did not stop sharing her knowledge to the Japanese people who have visual impairments.
The Japanese doctor is behind the creation of Digital Braille Innovations and the world’s first ever web-to-speech browser giving access for the blind to use the internet.
Today, Dr. Asakawa and other leading companies and technologists are creating tools and devices with artificial intelligence. Her visual impairment makes it more likely to have the best equipment and innovative technology for people affected from the loss of their eyesight.
Asakawa and her team have already developed a smartphone app that is voice-controlled which helps the blind to navigate and move around indoor locations that are complicated and unfamiliar with them.
The app is called NavCog and is used in some sites in the United States and Tokyo. According to IBM, it will be soon out in public. The app is still in its pilot stage and is not yet available for everyone.
Dr. Asakawa and IBM’s next project will be a navigational lightweight robot that will also aid the visually impaired. The lightweight robot will be able to steer and navigate the user in complex terrains of an airport, and it will also provide direction and information on flight details including the delays, gate changes, and the like.
The robot uses artificial intelligence that is capable of detecting light and measuring objects in the distance. It will also be using an image-recognition camera to check on the surroundings.
One of her dreams is to travel alone without worrying about the how’s and where’s of going to places she is unfamiliar with. IBM and Dr. Asakawa are expected to finish the project for 2020.Chieko Asakawa, a Japanese doctor and inventor, is developing a new technology that will aid visually impaired individuals. Her passion for advancing technology for the visually impaired started when Asakawa had a swimming pool accident when she was 14 which caused her blindness. She is now working with other companies to improve the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help people live a normal life.
When Asakawa started working on developing artificial intelligence, she did not have any technology to assist her impairment. The difficulties that she encountered made her do more in improving technology for the blind.
Her understanding in computer science focused on blind people worked with IBM and earned a doctorate. Dr. Asakawa did not stop sharing her knowledge to the Japanese people who have visual impairments.
The Japanese doctor is behind the creation of Digital Braille Innovations and the world’s first ever web-to-speech browser giving access for the blind to use the internet.
Today, Dr. Asakawa and other leading companies and technologists are creating tools and devices with artificial intelligence. Her visual impairment makes it more likely to have the best equipment and innovative technology for people affected from the loss of their eyesight.
For example, Dr Asakawa has developed NavCog, a voice-controlled smartphone app that helps blind people navigate complicated indoor locations.
Low-energy Bluetooth beacons are installed roughly every 10m (33ft) to create an indoor map. Sampling data is collected from those beacons to build “fingerprints” of a specific location.
“We detect user position by comparing the users’ current fingerprint to the server’s fingerprint model,” she says. “Collecting large amounts of data creates a more detailed map than is available in an application like Google Maps, which doesn’t work for indoor locations and cannot provide the level of detail blind and visually impaired people need.”
”It can be very helpful, but it cannot navigate us exactly,” says Dr Asakawa, who’s now an IBM Fellow, a prestigious group that has produced five Nobel prize winners.
NavCog is currently in a pilot stage, available in several sites in the US and one in Tokyo, and IBM says it is close to making the app available to the public.
Dr Asakawa’s next big challenge is the AI suitcase, a lightweight navigational robot.
It steers a blind person through the complex terrain of an airport, providing directions as well as useful information on flight delays and gate changes, for example.
The suitcase has a motor embedded so it can move autonomously, an image-recognition camera to detect surroundings, and Lidar – Light Detection And Ranging – for measuring distances to objects.
Lidar is more associated with driverless cars than smart suitcases
When stairs need to be climbed, the suitcase tells the user to pick it up.
“If we work together with the robot it could be lighter, smaller and lower cost,” Dr Asakawa says.
The current prototype is pretty heavy, she admits. IBM is pushing to make the next version lighter and hopes it will ultimately be able to contain at least a laptop computer. It aims to pilot the project in Tokyo in 2020.
