3 research outputs found
Sensing Super-Position: Human Sensing Beyond the Visual Spectrum
The coming decade of fast, cheap and miniaturized electronics and sensory devices opens new pathways for the development of sophisticated equipment to overcome limitations of the human senses. This paper addresses the technical feasibility of augmenting human vision through Sensing Super-position by mixing natural Human sensing. The current implementation of the device translates visual and other passive or active sensory instruments into sounds, which become relevant when the visual resolution is insufficient for very difficult and particular sensing tasks. A successful Sensing Super-position meets many human and pilot vehicle system requirements. The system can be further developed into cheap, portable, and low power taking into account the limited capabilities of the human user as well as the typical characteristics of his dynamic environment. The system operates in real time, giving the desired information for the particular augmented sensing tasks. The Sensing Super-position device increases the image resolution perception and is obtained via an auditory representation as well as the visual representation. Auditory mapping is performed to distribute an image in time. The three-dimensional spatial brightness and multi-spectral maps of a sensed image are processed using real-time image processing techniques (e.g. histogram normalization) and transformed into a two-dimensional map of an audio signal as a function of frequency and time. This paper details the approach of developing Sensing Super-position systems as a way to augment the human vision system by exploiting the capabilities of Lie human hearing system as an additional neural input. The human hearing system is capable of learning to process and interpret extremely complicated and rapidly changing auditory patterns. The known capabilities of the human hearing system to learn and understand complicated auditory patterns provided the basic motivation for developing an image-to-sound mapping system. The human brain is superior to most existing computer systems in rapidly extracting relevant information from blurred, noisy, and redundant images. From a theoretical viewpoint, this means that the available bandwidth is not exploited in an optimal way. While image-processing techniques can manipulate, condense and focus the information (e.g., Fourier Transforms), keeping the mapping as direct and simple as possible might also reduce the risk of accidentally filtering out important clues. After all, especially a perfect non-redundant sound representation is prone to loss of relevant information in the non-perfect human hearing system. Also, a complicated non-redundant image-to-sound mapping may well be far more difficult to learn and comprehend than a straightforward mapping, while the mapping system would increase in complexity and cost. This work will demonstrate some basic information processing for optimal information capture for headmounted systems
Ayuda t茅cnica para la autonom铆a en el desplazamiento
The project developed in this thesis involves the design, implementation and evaluation of a
new technical assistance aiming to ease the mobility of people with visual impairments. By
using processing and sounds synthesis, the users can hear the sonification protocol (through
bone conduction) informing them, after training, about the position and distance of the
various obstacles that may be on their way, avoiding eventual accidents.
In this project, surveys were conducted with experts in the field of rehabilitation, blindness
and techniques of image processing and sound, which defined the user requirements that
served as guideline for the design.
The thesis consists of three self-contained blocks: (i) image processing, where 4 processing
algorithms are proposed for stereo vision, (ii) sonification, which details the proposed sound
transformation of visual information, and (iii) a final central chapter on integrating the above
and sequentially evaluated in two versions or implementation modes (software and
hardware).
Both versions have been tested with both sighted and blind participants, obtaining qualitative
and quantitative results, which define future improvements to the project. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------El proyecto desarrollado en la presente tesis doctoral consiste en el dise帽o, implementaci贸n y
evaluaci贸n de una nueva ayuda t茅cnica orientada a facilitar la movilidad de personas con
discapacidad visual.
El sistema propuesto consiste en un procesador de estereovisi贸n y un sintetizador de sonidos,
mediante los cuales, las usuarias y los usuarios pueden escuchar un c贸digo de sonidos
mediante transmisi贸n 贸sea que les informa, previo entrenamiento, de la posici贸n y distancia
de los distintos obst谩culos que pueda haber en su camino, evitando accidentes.
En dicho proyecto, se han realizado encuestas a expertos en el campo de la rehabilitaci贸n, la
ceguera y en las t茅cnicas y tecnolog铆as de procesado de imagen y sonido, mediante las cuales
se definieron unos requisitos de usuario que sirvieron como gu铆a de propuesta y dise帽o.
La tesis est谩 compuesta de tres grandes bloques autocontenidos: (i) procesado de imagen,
donde se proponen 4 algoritmos de procesado de visi贸n est茅reo, (ii) sonificaci贸n, en el cual se
detalla la propuesta de transformaci贸n a sonido de la informaci贸n visual, y (iii) un 煤ltimo
cap铆tulo central sobre integraci贸n de todo lo anterior en dos versiones evaluadas
secuencialmente, una software y otra hardware.
Ambas versiones han sido evaluadas con usuarios tanto videntes como invidentes, obteniendo
resultados cualitativos y cuantitativos que permiten definir mejoras futuras sobre el proyecto
finalmente implementado