>
> From an article at
>http://www.ece.cmu.edu/news/story/2006/05/carnegie_mellon_team/#b-
>
>Sometimes tech projects that make the largest impact don't revolve
>around high-end, new technology. The key is the approach taken to
>finding a solution
>for the problem at hand, and being able to combine current technology
>with cutting-edge tech. Take
>Trinetra,
>for instance, a project that aims to develop cost-effective assistive
>technologies to provide blind people with a greater degree of
>independence in their
>daily activities. The Sanskrit word Trinetra refers to the powerful
>third eye of the Hindu god Shiva.
>
>Trinetra was started by
>Priya Narasimhan,
>an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and
>computer science, who struck upon the idea for the project one day in
>December 2004 when
>she noticed how difficult it was for blind people to catch a bus on a
>snowy Pittsburgh evening. Patrick Lanigan, a graduate student in the
>Information Networking Institute (INI),
>Aaron Paulos, a Research Programmer in ECE, and Andrew Williams, an ECE
>graduate student, all opted to work under Narasimhan for Trinetra
>because of the
>passion they shared for working on a project that had the potential to
>help the significant blind population of Pittsburgh.
>
>Trinetra technology has just been installed in Carnegie Mellon's campus
>store, Entropy, to make it easier for blind people to go grocery
>shopping. This
>assistive technology works as follows: imagine a blind man walks into
>Entropy and wants to pick up a bottle of mustard. As he walks past one
>aisle to another,
>he uses a UPC-reading Baracoda pencil integrated with his phone to scan
>the barcodes on the shelves under the products he browses. The Baracoda
>pencil
>contacts the UPC database through the Internet-enabled phone and
>identifies the product. The information returned to the phone is then
>read out by TALKS,
>software developed by Nuance that was installed in the phone.
>
>Dan Rossi, mentor to the Trinetra team, has been blind since he was
>seven; he is also a database system administrator. A highly accomplished
>person in the
>area of technology, he was the guiding force for Trinetra, with
>researchers frequently waiting for his opinion on certain aspects of the
>project before
>moving ahead.
>
>"We have involved a blind person from day one in the design of the
>project so that blind people's needs and inputs have been factored into
>our design in
>an intrinsic and fundamental way," said Narasimhan.
>
>"You cannot imagine the real impact of this," Rossi said. "When shopping
>with a store assistant, it is nearly impossible to browse products. I
>ask for what
>I need, and they take me to that product, and that's it. A device that
>can tell me what just about anything in the store actually is is
>incredible."
>
>There were many challenges faced by the Trinetra project. "The major
>challenge for us is to keep the project's outcomes cost-effective. If we
>develop technologies
>that end up increasing a blind person's cost of living significantly, we
>have really not lived up to our mission," Narasimhan said. "The other
>challenge
>is to resist the temptation to add in bells and whistles which, while
>they might be attractive to look at, have limited practical use to blind
>people."
>Since devices for the visually disabled are a niche market, they
>translate into high costs for the end user. Trinetra's bag of gadgets
>includes mostly
>off-the-shelf items that people without disabilities use every day.
>
>One of the unique features of Trinetra that sets it apart from other
>ongoing projects is that it leverages available infrastructure. The
>developers don't
>have to pay for the barcode (UPC) database; it is already available on
>the Internet. These design decisions help keep costs down for the
>project, so insufficient
>funds have not been a cause of worry so far for the Trinetra team. When
>the project began, Narasimhan took money off her payroll to keep the
>project going.
>Since then, the project has survived comfortably on the $7500 of funding
>it received from the
>Pennsylvania Cyber Security Commercialization Initiative (PACSCI).
>
>But there's more to worry about than just keeping costs low in a project
>like this. Narasimhan pointed out the privacy and safety issues that
>might arise
>for people using these services. Such issues and other more intricate
>ones have to be understood and analyzed simultaneously with the
>development of assistive
>technologies.
>
>Trinetra's next mission is to make Carnegie Mellon's shuttle service
>friendlier to the visually impaired by keeping them informed of arrival
>times. The
>phone is again the preferred medium of communication, this time using
>text messages. To start things off, Narasimhan had her research students
>go around
>and try to get a feel of the shuttle service. The project might also end
>up being useful for students using the service late at night.
>
>So what keeps the Trinetra team going? "The team designed, developed,
>and tested a concept that not only works, but is completely useful,"
>said Rossi. "This
>is not a sensor net vest of pager motors and scanning hats that are a
>neat idea, but not practical in the least. The Trinetra system is
>practical and useful
>and I commend the team on their work."
>
>The future looks bright for the Trinetra team. Narasimhan said, "My aim
>is for Trinetra to become one of the research thrusts of my research
>group, so that
>we can explore the application of embedded, distributed technologies to
>improve the quality of life for disabled people."
>
>Reprinted with permission from
>The Tartan Online,
>April 10, 2006. Text by Saravana Sivasankaran.
>The Trinetra Team
>
>Left to right: Andrew Williams, Aaron Paulos, Patrick Lanigan, and the
>project's leader, Priya Narasimhan, show their research.
>Dan Rossi
>
>Dan Rossi, the project's mentor and a user of Trinetra, scans a product.
>
>
>contain
>
>Mark Senk | zia7@cdc.gov
>412 386-6513
>http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/
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