This Smart Paint Talks To Canes To Help People Who Are Blind Navigate
Ohio State School for the Blind is experimenting with smart paint. Applications of this tech could be a great tool for people with visual impairment and beyond!
The paint uses rare-earth nanocrystals that can emit a unique light signature, which a sensor added to the tip of a cane can activate and then read. “If you pulse a laser or LED into these materials, they’ll pulse back at you at a very specific frequency,” says Josh Collins, chief technology officer at Intelligent Materials, the company that manufacturers the oxides that can be added to paint.
As the company explored how the paint could be used with autonomous cars–the paint could, for example, help a car recognize an intersection or lane, or provide markers that make GPS much more accurate–they realized that the paint could also be useful for people who are blind.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 7.0.0 Released and More! #Python #Adafruit #CircuitPython @micropython @ThePSF
Adafruit IoT Monthly — WFH Stress Monitor, Helping Parkinson's Patients with IoT, and more!
