Reaching out to blind shoppers

For the visually impaired, trying to locate produce on store shelves can prove a tricky task. But a new technology being developed by scientists at Pennsylvania State University promises to make this burdensome chore easier.

Researchers are creating a glove that, through the use of high-tech cameras, can recognise shopping items specified by the wearer. The user is alerted to the item, or their proximity to it, by a series of vibration motors as they scan the shopping shelf. Similar technology already exists, but it can only identify items from their barcodes once they have already been located. The new technology will help blind shoppers identify more closely what it is they want.

As Michelle McManus, President of the Happy Valley Chapter of the National Federation of the Blind told Penn State’s news website, people with sight problems “always have to find someone at the store to help” and attempt to  “explain exactly what [they] want” in the hope that whoever is helping will get the precise product desired. With this new technology, blind people will be able to locate the item themselves without having to rely on a third party.

Known informally as the ‘Third Eye’, the glove is part of the Visual Cortex on Silicon, a research project of 50 people, including both graduate students and senior scientists, with a mission to apply technology to improving human vision. It spans eight universities and is led by Penn State computer scientist Vijay Narayanan.