Device helps navigate daily life (AP/CNN) {"GPS" for blind}

[eppur_se_muova]

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are trying to pick up where GPS leaves off. Its System for Wearable Audio Navigation, or SWAN, consists of a wearable computer connected to a headband packed with sensors that help sight-impaired users know where they are and how to get where they're going.

Besides a pendant-sized wireless GPS tracker, there are light sensors and thermometers that help distinguish between indoors and outdoors. Cameras gauge how far away objects and obstacles are. A compass establishes direction. And an inertia detector tracks the roll, pitch and yaw of the user's head.

All the data are crunched by a computer in a backpack, which relays high-pitch sonar-like signals that direct users to their destinations. It also works with a database of maps and floor plans to help pinpoint each sidewalk, door, hall and stairwell.

Bruce Walker, an assistant psychology professor who helped develop the system, said in a few years it could be used to help guide blind people, first-responders to emergencies or soldiers through unknown territory.
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Like a sonar device, the SWAN system sends out audible blips that quicken as users move closer to a preprogrammed target and slow as they get farther away. The sound of a hinge opening plays as it passes by a door, and cues can signal bathrooms, restaurants, stores, and other attractions.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/10/10/piloting.people.ap/index.html