Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University (C.M.U.) are developing affordable scanning systems to give blind people greater independence in daily activities, such as cooking, grocery shopping or riding a bus.

"The single biggest thing to a blind person is to have independence, to never have to ask a sighted person for assistance," said project leader Priya Narasimhan, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. Narasimhan's venture is called ‘Trinetra’, a Sanskrit word referring to the powerful third eye of the Hindu god,’Shiva’.

Their system relies on devices available in any electronics store, including a cell phone, Bluetooth wireless headset and portable bar code scanner. Here's how the Trinetra prototype works – A blind person uses a bar code-reading pencil to scan a grocery item. The information is sent via the wireless headset to an Internet-enabled cell phone. The phone communicates with a public database, which translates the bar code into a recognizable product name. This name is relayed to the cell phone, where text-to-speech software articulates it into the headset.Narisimhan is seeking commercial partners to refine and market the system, and support from the federally funded ‘Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center’, run by the University of Pittsburgh and C.M.U.

The technology could be adapted to rely on radio frequency identification tags -- microchips with antennae that communicate product information wirelessly, instead of bar codes. It also could be coupled with a global positioning system receiver on buses to allow blind and sighted riders to track arrival times and locations in real time.

This technology could really make a difference in terms of independence for blind people. But more extensive testing is needed to determine whether Trinetra would have broad appeal for visually impaired people.