Innovations: Students Create a Low-Vision Aid; Microheaters and Cell Chips
Student team zeros in on a seeing-eye computer
- A visually impaired volunteer uses a Wearable Low Vision Aid prototype to maneuver around a chair while researcher Ryland Bryant looks on. The device uses a laser to paint an image inside the user’s eye and generates icons that warn of upcoming obstacles.
Read a news article on the Wearable Low Vision Aid.
What do you get when you cross a computer and a seeing-eye dog?
That's easy, according to a group of student researchers at the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory: a first-of-its-kind Wearable Low Vision Aid. And, they add, the digital helper does have some distinct advantages over a canine:
- You don’t have to feed it.
- It doesn’t drool.
- There’s no need to worry about keeping a pooper-scooper handy.
But the biggest advantage is that, in many ways, the computer has the potential to do a better job identifying walking hazards.
“Even with a cane or a guide dog, low-vision people can have a difficult time identifying obstacles that can be hazardous,” said Eric Seibel, research assistant professor in mechanical engineering at the lab, who for the past four years has overseen the student team that developed the device. “This is another set of eyes looking out for them.”
The group recently demonstrated the latest prototype of the technology at the Society for Information Display's annual conference, held this year at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle. The work is funded by the National Science Foundation.
The Wearable Low Vision Aid was designed to be both portable and low cost, according to Seibel. A laptop computer that provides the “brains” for the system is carried in a backpack, and can be used for other tasks once the user gets to work or school. The imaging system is mounted on a pair of glasses and combines a ring of light-emitting diodes that fire bursts of infrared light in coordination with a small camera that collects images of the infrared-illuminated landscape.
Software created by the student team compares that infrared scene with the normally lit scene. Since closer objects reflect more light than distant ones, the system can “see” which objects remain in the field of view and grow in size, indicating a possible collision. The computer assesses the situation and, if appropriate, generates a flashing icon to warn the wearer of the danger.
The device can be programmed to generate different icons for different hazards, so it not only warns of a hazard, but also lets wearers know exactly what they are dealing with.
“One of the beauties of this is that we can customize it for different users,” Seibel said. “All of these people have specific obstacles that they regularly encounter that are quite hazardous to them and we can cater the device to fit their unique needs.”
Tiny heaters may pave way for easier tissue engineering, medical sensors
- Tiny microheaters coated with a material that bonds with proteins as temperature rises and releases them as it drops could provide the basis for easier tissue engineering and high-tech medical sensors.
Tiny microheaters that can prompt chemical changes in surrounding material may provide the means to more easily grow replacement tissue for injured patients and form the basis for medical sensors that could quickly detect pathogens, according to researchers at the University of Washington who are the first to demonstrate the process.
The key to the technique, according to Associate Professor Karl Bohringer in the UW’s Department of Electrical Engineering, lies in temperature-driven changes in the material with which the less-than-one-millimeter-wide electric heaters are coated. Proteins stick to the material as its temperature rises, and release when it goes back down. That, according to Bohringer, opens the door to a wide array of possibilities.
“The proteins stick locally to the areas we heat, and we can stick cells to the proteins,” he said. “This provides a relatively simple, low cost way of creating cell chips to run experiments and to create other useful devices.”
Bohringer and colleague Buddy Ratner, director of the UW Engineered Biomaterials program, presented the research recently at the 12th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems in Boston, and a patent is pending for the process.