HoloLens, “computer face” from Microsoft, is designed for mixing digital images with the real world. However, scientists have discovered that the headset is also very good to cope with the unusual: helping blind people make their way through the building and to better understand what objects are around them. Researchers from the California Institute of technology have created a new application guide for HoloLens, based on the display capabilities of objects and spaces in real time in the device and speaker that can make sound come from different angles of three-dimensional space. They used these functions to map a complex route through a building on campus and created a virtual guide that helps blind people to navigate the building.
How it works in reality? A female voice guides a blind man with HoloLens, suggesting that “both sides of the railing, up the stairs”, “turn right”. One follows commands, easily moving from the lobby up stairs, getting in the right doors, until you find yourself in a room on the second floor.
While the application tested seven subjects. Everything got to the destination on the first attempt, however, one little messed up. Markus Meister, Professor at Caltech and co-author of the study, believes it could eventually lead to devices that will help people with low vision, such as hotels or shopping centers will ease their work in unfamiliar places. Outdoors such navigators are already in place, but indoors, as noted by Maister, variants not so much.
HoloLens can now hold the blind through a complex building
Ilya Hel