An IIT Delhi lab has developed an innovative high-tech cane that allows blind persons to easily guide themselves through their environment. It uses modern sensor technology to detect obstacles and what’s more, it carries an affordable price tag.

From research laboratories to the marketplace—the journey for most innovations from India’s leading technical and research institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), Indian Institute of Science, among others, is long and a difficult one. The creative minds behind these products operate on a shoe-string budget and survival is dependent on the loan given by the institutes as seed money or personal finances from friends and family. The net result: a lot of the developed technology ends up inside another product which is then sold to the end-customer.

An academia-industry initiative from IIT Delhi seems to be defying the trend. The institute’s Assistive Technologies Group (Assistech) has developed an innovative and affordable navigation aid for the visually impaired. The device, called SmartCane, helps users detect all obstacles above the knee-level. Utilising modern sensor technology, this device detects obstructions up to a distance of three metres and is compatible with the standard folding white cane currently used by millions of visually impaired people across the globe.

According to the World Health Organisation, 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide, with 90% residing in developing countries. India is home for 12 million people with blindness, the largest for any country in the world. Affordability is a key barrier to adoption of technology-based solutions as the few devices that are available, the average price point is in the range of R65,000 to R85,000. In contrast, SmartCane costs only R3,000.

SmartCane was developed in Assistech (a lab which is part of IIT-Delhi that focuses on developing affordable technology for the visually impaired) by Rohan Paul, a Rhodes scholar from Oxford and an IIT alumnus, who chose to develop and launch it in India—letting go of many other opportunities in the west to take the product from concept to reality. “While it is commonplace for prototypes to be developed, very few of those prototypes eventually become products. What makes SmartCane even more special is that it is affordable and can be used by the people at the bottom of the pyramid,” he says.

According to Paul, blindness is not just a medical condition but possesses the larger dimensions of social exclusion, stigma and neglect. “Blind people are often taken by surprise by over-hanging branches, protruding air-conditioners and parked vehicles while navigating through unfamiliar terrain. SmartCane warns the user of such objects in their path through a unique system of vibratory patterns, designed to detect.

SOURCE: Financial Express