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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Show Notes:
Animotus with Adam Spiers
Toyota shows self-driving technology being readied for 2020 (Update) http://buff.ly/1MvKHsv
“Halloween” http://buff.ly/1LitG0p
Glove Translates Sign Language into Text and Speech http://buff.ly/1OuZ41F
On the Hill with Audrey www.ataporg.org
http://www.hauntedpliers.co.uk/ | www.Flatland.org.uk | http://www.eng.yale.edu/grablab/
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——-transcript follows ——
ADAM SPIERS: Hi, this is Ad Spiers, and I’m a robotics researcher at Yale University, and this is your Assistance Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 229 of assistive technology update. It’s scheduled to be released on October 16 of 2015.
A quick editorial note. If you notice the difference in my voice throughout the stories today, it’s not because I’m sick and unhappy. It’s because I enjoyed a lovely campfire with my family last night and now I’m all stopped up this morning.
My interview today is going to be a great one. It’s with a Yale robotics engineer named Dr. Ad Spiers; we’re going to talk about his new product called animotus. We’ve got a story about Toyotas self driving cars that are going to be ready for 2020; some Halloween tips for children with disabilities; and our segment with Audrey Busch from ATAP who’s going to talk about what’s happening in Washington DC.
We hope you’ll check out our website at www.eastersealstech.com, shoot us a note over on Twitter @INDATAproject, or call our listener line, give us some feedback. 317-721-7124.
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Do you like this show? You really should check out Assistance Technology Frequently Asked Questions. ATFAQ is our new panel show where we answer your question from voicemails, emails, tweets and everything, and it’s taken off like wildfire. Everybody listening, everybody is asking questions and getting some answers. Head over to ATFAQshow.com.
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I’ve got a quote here that says, “Our goal is to offer the freedom of movement to everyone including the elderly and the disabled.” The cool thing about that is it comes from Chief Safety Technology Officer Moritaka Yoshida at Toyota. It seems that Toyota has been working on a self driving car. Recently they took a Lexus out on the highway at about 37 mph, and let it go for about 10 minutes, and it was changing lanes and braking and stearing, and the person driving the car didn’t do anything except turn it on and kick back and watch. Toyota’s plans are to have some driven cars in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Obviously I’m fascinated with the idea of self driving cars because, one, they are cool, and two, they give people with disabilities a lot more options in terms of independent transportation. In the past, Toyota has kind of pooh-poohed this idea, but I think there’s a lot of industry pressure for them to get on board with self driving cars. Google is working on it, Apple is working on it. Now Toyota’s talking about their work in this area. I’m going to link over to the fizz.org article and you can read more about this story on Toyota self driving cars queued up for 2020.
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So on my screen in front of me in the studio is Oscar the Grouch and Wall-E and a police car and a wrestler in a rink and Batman and a dragon and Thomas the toy train. The reason I’m looking at such things as I found a really cool newsletter from the Alabama Star Network, which is the tech act or Assistive Technology Act in the state of Alabama. In their October newsletter, they’ve got a pretty cool article about Halloween resources for children with disabilities. They’ve got some links over to UCP Halloween Without Limits, some of the coolest wheelchair costumes which are cost of that really integrate a wheelchair into the customer itself, some ideas about how to make Halloween costumes for children with sensory processing disorders, a really neat way to make a Fall sensory been, and also some ideas about how to make better choices when it comes to Halloween treats for kids with certain disabilities or dietary requirements. It’s a fun article and we are getting close to the holiday season here in the United States, and I know that my kids are getting excited about that. I’m going to pop a link in the show notes over to the Star Network’s newsletter and you can get excited about Halloween and check out these cool resources.
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From our friends over at RESNA, we’ve been directed to an article in Speech Technology Magazine. The headline reads, “Glove translates sign language into text and speech.” Hadeel Ayoub is recent Masters degree from Goldsmiths University in London, and she has created a thing called the wireless sign language glove. The idea is this device, which is in its third prototype, goes over your hand and then uses a series of sensors to monitor your hand movement, convert that into a computerized spoken series of text. Ayoub is working on making this technology so that she can help people with disabilities communicate, and she focuses a lot on the technology and how it’s wireless and how it’s very accurate in detecting hand movements. When I see technology like this, it’s mixed for me. I’m excited because I think that the idea technology monitoring hand movements and converting gestures into language is great. I also know enough about time in which to know that that’s not easy. It’s not easy to take gestures and convert them into spoken language English. They are differently languages. My friends who are some image interpreters might raise an eyebrow when they see this story. I’m interested in what the technology can do in the future and always maintain that the integrity of the language and the communication be there. I’ll pop a link in the show notes. I’ll let you read about this new glove that translates sign language into speech and you can decide for yourself. Check our show notes.
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It’s time for On the Hill with Audrey Bush. Audrey Busch is the Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs. In her update, she lets us know how the power of politics is impacting people with disabilities and their use of assistive technology. Learn more about Audrey and her work at ATAPorg.org.
AUDREY BUSCH: This is Audrey Bush, Policy Director for the Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs, coming to you with your monthly Washington Update. It has been sometime since our last federal update, and while Congress was back in their hometowns for the entire month of August, leaving little to no news to report, the month of September made up for the quietness of the last months of summer. The main objective Congress had when they return from their annual month-long recess was to find a way to fund the government in fiscal year 2016 that would begin on October 1. The politics behind passing a funding bill were complicated in September. Democrats would only vote on a continuing resolution, level funding the federal government at fiscal year 2015 levels that included no policy riders, while many Republicans would not vote for any continuing resolution that did not defund Planned Parenthood. Ultimately a funding showdown which was looking like an inevitable government shutdown was on the horizon in Washington, and then his Holiness Pope Francis arrived in Washington.
The arrival of Pope Francis brought the first address to Congress in the nation’s history. What a poignant time for a leader of peace and love to enter the halls of Congress. At a time when Congress was deeply divided and embattled in a funding war regarding how to fund the federal government and avoid a government shutdown, the Pope address Congress calling for a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good. House Speaker Boehner had long-awaited the Pope to address Congress and was quoted stated that she had nothing left to accomplish after he brought Pope Francis to the capital. Such a quote posited the question of how much longer the speaker intended to serve the nation in Congress. This question was quickly answered when John Boehner announced his resignation effective October 30 of this year.
How does the Pope and John Boehner’s resignation tie back to funding the federal government in a year 2016, you may ask? Well, Speaker Boehner’s announcement made him free to avoid politics on funding the federal government and allowed him to the appeal to house Democrats to vote on the passage of a clean continuing resolution that would not include any policy riders to defund Planned Parenthood. The Senate also passed a clean CR, which was ultimately signed by the president and will level fund the federal government until December 11 of 2015. Given this continuing resolution does not fund the federal government for the entire year, Congress is now busily working on a final funding bill that will either level fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year, or they will pass a new budget that will be based on the appropriation bills that Congress has developed to date. It’s unclear which funding path will be chosen, and only time will tell. While Congress continues to develop a final funding plan for the federal government, they will also do with selecting a new speaker of the house.
While the speaker of the house his resignation came as a surprise, it was not the only prominent one in the month of September. It seems as though Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan will also be leaving his post in which he has served since the beginning of President Obama’s first term in office. Secretary Duncan will resign effective December of this year. As always, there’s lots of politicking and maneuvering happening in Washington. Stay tuned for your next Washington update to hear the latest happenings in our nation’s capital.
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WADE WINGLER: I spend a lot of my time looking at the cool new stuff that’s hitting the world of assistive technology. Every once in a while, I find something that really makes me raise my brow and say well, that’s an interesting concept. As I think about transportation and navigation for people who are blind or visually impaired, I was stunned and very fascinated when I saw it come across my newsfeed called Animotus, which is I think a different way to think about navigation and haptic interfaces and all kinds of cool stuff. I am very fortunate today to have a yell engineer named Adam Spears on our show. Ad, are you still there?
ADAM SPIERS: Yep.
WADE WINGLER: Good. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day period I’m excited to learn about Animotus. I’m going to ask first tell me a little bit about yourself and your regular job, and then I’m going to ask you about what is Animotus. Let’s hear about you first.
ADAM SPIERS: I’m a postdoc researcher at the University and the grad lab, which is a robotics laboratory. I spend my days building parts of robots and looking at devices to aid visually impaired people and also looking to prosthetics quite a lot as well.
WADE WINGLER: That’s cool. That’s a natural fit for something like Animotus. Tell us what it is best described as to me.
ADAM SPIERS: So the Animotus a navigation device, but it’s quite unusual. Is navigation assistance device that changes shape. Most devices that help people navigate are generally screen-based, so the GPS system that you would find in a car or a smartphone. These things tend to have a big screen that show maps or whatever and arrows and waypoints and things like that. The Animotus, on the other hand, is kind of a cube. It’s a geometrical object that can morph into slightly different shapes to guide you around. This is something I developed as an alternative to other devices which don’t use screens but maybe vibrates, make sounds, think that that. This is my attempt to make something I think is more intuitive, nice to use, and less distracting.
WADE WINGLER: You’ve got me fascinated. It’s a cube. I assume in my go into your hand. Tell me about how big it is, is it heavy, how is it connected, what is its behavior? Describe this more to me because I’m fascinated.
ADAM SPIERS: At the moment, it’s a prototype. Something that’s been built in the lab. It’s actually been used by a lot of people, so it’s at a further stage than most prototypes. It’s a cube’s shape. It’s about as wide as a matchbox for more cubelike. It’s designed to fit into lots of people’s hands, has kinda rounded edges and stuff to make it more ergonomic. It’s very light. It was about 100 grams — forgive me. I’m British. I work in the metric system.
WADE WINGLER: So it’s like 50 pounds, right?
ADAM SPIERS: No. But it’s 3-D printed as well. Nearly every part of it is pretty printed so it’s got those plastic kind of feel to it. It’s kind of got a few checkout features on it like a big raise triangle on the top, so if you can’t see, you can easily identify which way is up to hold it.
WADE fWINGLER: That helped me understand a little bit more about the physicality of it. Talk to me about the functionality. What does it do? You said the changes shape? Describe that to me.
ADAM SPIERS: So the idea is that when you are navigating, you want certain types of information to help you get around. When I see navigating, I mean as a pedestrian. Maybe walking in an open environment. This can apply to different things. Let’s say you’re walking and you want to know if I should turn left, turn right, how far I am from even the next step in the kind of list of instructions you need to go through to get somewhere, or just to the destination. Say you’re trying to be guided to a café or something. So the way the device works is you basically hold this thing up right in your hand, sort of with your palm facing upward. Generally you can hold it in different ways, but that’s how I like to do it. And then the top half of the device moves independently to the bottom. Basically it kind of sticks itself out. That extends and protrudes the top to show you how far away you are from the target. As you get closer, that will get smaller and smaller, eventually becoming a cube again. The other thing it does is the top half can twist to tell you which direction you should walk in to correct your path. Say you are walking down the sidewalk and you start veering off a bit to the left or the right, it will kind of net you one way or the other to get you going back in a straight line. And then say you get to the end of the block and you have to turn left, the device will turn around to the left as well. So it’s basically morphing from a cube into these kind of extended or twisted cube shapes. The goal as you’re walking around is to basically respond to your motion.
WADE WINGLER: Lots of questions bubbling around in my mind. The hardware interface. I have to assume that’s talking to a computer or smartphone or a tablet via some sort of a wireless connection?
ADAM SPIERS: That’s absolutely right. It’s a wireless device. At the minutes got all the tests that we’ve done have been indoor locations car so a laboratory location. We actually did a large theater production in London using this device as well. We basically use a computer to simulate GPS. Your GPS, the satellite location that your smartphone uses, because we are testing it indoors, the device can’t see any sidelights because of the ceiling. We have it connected at the minute to a computer. In the future, it would probably be connected to a smartphone. So you would have the device that you carry around all the time anyway, your smartphone, and it would respond to the GPS and whatever guidance instructions you gave your smartphone. The same way you would use Google maps or navigation things, say I want to go here, and the device would take over and respond. That’s kind of the intended structure at the minute. That parts and development.
WADE WINGLER: That’s interesting. It will probably be Bluetooth or something similar in terms of an interface in the future. What about the software? Is this going to be something that will interface with another map application through an API, or whether have to be a special mapping program to interface with it? What will that look like?
ADAM SPIERS: That’s why flexible at the minute. Either solution could work. For now, I’ve been writing my own software to so I can – because the work in the research lab, I kind of am a scientist, I write my own software. I can record a lot of data about how people are moving around and how well they are using the device and they said that. At the minutes, the task I’ve been getting people to do are pretty simple and sense of funding things within the lab or in this installation in London I mentioned before which is a larger station. It’s kind of finding things, finding destination and a rather open space. When it comes to actually navigating a city, I’m not sure if I would trust my own programming skills enough from A to B. They might be interfacing with some other software. I know there’s quite a lot of good open-source mapping software out there that we could get it to talk to potentially.
WADE WINGLER: Those things are becoming more available and better all the time. That’s great.
ADAM SPIERS: Absolutely.
WADE WINGLER: I think we are assuming that we are talking about used by people who are blind or visually impaired. Can you tell me a little bit more about your targeted user? Is it somebody with low vision, somebody who’s totally blind, somebody with high tech skills, lower tolerance for technology? Describe your targeted user little bit.
ADAM SPIERS: One of the main objectives of this device when I was designing it was to make something that was incredibly intuitive, something that you could give to someone and they wouldn’t need to be tech savvy will be necessarily dedicated to learning a new skill or learning a new piece of technology. I really wanted it to work, and within a few minutes of taking it up. I would say not necessarily looking for anyone who’s kind of tech savvy, but kind of the main requirement is you have a sufficient feeling and dexterity in your hands to feel this device moving in different shapes. It’s quite pronounce how it moves. In terms of the user, I actually designed it to be used by any level of sight. The idea is it would also appeal to sighted people as well as being very beneficial to visually impaired people of all different levels. The project, this actually stemmed out of the collaboration I had with a visually impaired theater group who were based in London. I’m originally from the UK, as you can tell. We worked before to make haptic navigation devices for their theater production so the audience would be guided around these kind of immersive spaces where they had the show running. This kind of developed through a collaboration with them, working a lot with those who were visually impaired and knowing what worked and didn’t work for them. Also I think this would be appealing to a sighted person who doesn’t want to look at the phone all the time. There’s been quite a few studies that show that there is an increase in production accidents as phones become more popular and more able to do different things. People are always walking into lampposts when they are texting and things like that. Recently, the Apple Watch that came out had the technology to give limited haptic feedback to help you be guided around. This has certainly appear to a few bloggers who said I no longer have my face glued to my phone when I’m walking down the street. It’s designed, as I said, to appeal to a wide range of people. I think a lot of benefit would be had by visually impaired people and blind people. One thing I would like to add as well is one of the reasons for making this haptic and shape changing as I didn’t want to use an audio guidance interface. I feel that if you are visually impaired, you really want to be able to hear what’s going on around you. I wanted to leave the ears free to appreciate the environment or listen to hazards or just to continue a conversation you are having with someone without putting headphones on just to walk around somewhere.
WADE WINGLER: That leads to one of my next questions, maybe probably answered at this point. Why this kind of interface or other reasons for this interface instead of talking GPS or a Bluetooth braille display which might give you textbased feedback? Why is this going to be better?
ADAM SPIERS: As I mentioned with audio, it’s very premature to say that. I think one of the things with audio is it tends to distract or obscure the cues in the environment. I know that if I’m wearing my headphones and listen to music, I’m more likely to step out in front of a car even as a sighted individual. This is something that is apparent to me that if you cover the sensors I use for navigation — you don’t necessarily have to do it. You got the whole sense of touch free as another interface. Compared to other touch interfaces, you mentioned braille display, a lot of researchers have looked into vibrating interfaces, which is another form of haptics. Basically what goes on when you get a text message from your phone or an email or something like that, it buzzes. One of the things about vibration is its very good at providing an alert signal, like there’s a call coming in or something’s happening. It’s designed to be quite distracting. I find that using that for long periods of time, which is normally associated with navigation, can also be distracting. With braille displays, that something I had considered as a method of navigation, but I know what my colleagues have read braille, it seems like cognitively demanding in the same way that I find I may be reading a text message while walking is also quite distracting. Again, I’m trying to get an interface that’s less distracting. Also I know that only about maybe half of the blind folks that I know are able to read braille. It doesn’t seem to be a universal language. I really wanted to make something that’s really inclusive for all sorts of people and skill sets. That’s kind of why went to discount this interface. As I said, it’s pretty intuitive. The people who have done studies seem to think that as well.
WADE WINGLER: I think you make a really good point when you talk about braille literacy. I don’t have stats and put to me these days, but I think it may be much less than half. I think it may be more around 10 or 15 percent of the population who might read braille because of vision impairment are braille literate. I think that’s a good point. You mentioned that this is a still a prototype. What is the status in terms of long-term commercialization? Everybody wants to know when can I get one and how much is it going to cost. Any predictions on what commercialization might look like?
ADAM SPIERS: There has been some discussions with some potential commercial avenues for this. I would simply like to see it in people’s hands, helping them get around. It’s a long way to go. As I said, we’ve only done indoor of oratory based studies at the moment. Hopefully we’re going to be doing some further, more realistic studies as well, soon, to see the feasibility of that. In terms of cost, hoping as low as possible. It’s a pretty simple device right now. As I said, it’s currently a research prototype so it’s in a lab with a 3-D printer. That is not generally the way you go with the manufacturing something for mass fabrication. There’s a ways to go yet. There’s certainly been a lot of positive interest since we first developed it. It would be nice to see it get out into the real world.
WADE WINGLER: Absolutely. We’ve got about a minute left in the interview. And that amount of time, tell me a story. Tell me about somebody’s life who’s been impacted or might be impacted by Animotus.
ADAM SPIERS: One of the really interesting things about this project compared to other research developments has been the first way we tested it, which was in a huge theater production in London of about 100 people that navigated an old church and complete darkness to uncover parts of the story. It sounds pretty crazy, and there’s a website of flatland.org.uk where you can read more about it. One of the most interesting things I think about that was because we had visually impaired and sighted people going in there, one of our aims was to create a theater experience where you basically had the same experience, irrespective of how well you could see. That was something I think we achieved. Maybe that didn’t answer your question exactly because it wasn’t just one person, we had about 100 people go through that, who about 15 percent of them were visually impaired. It certainly seems they had a comparative interesting time in our unusual theater experience using the Animotus. That was quite rewarding for us.
WADE WINGLER: That’s fascinating. That’s a great story. If people want to learn more about Animotus, about your work, what kind of contact information would you provide?
ADAM SPIERS: I have a website which is hauntedpliers.co.uk. Also I work in the Yale Grab Lab. Googling either of those or looking for those online will certainly work. I think that’s probably the best way.
WADE WINGLER: Ad Spiers is a postdoc researcher at university, has been our guest today talking about Animotus. Ad, thank you so much for being on our show.
ADAM SPIERS: Thanks a lot. It’s been a pleasure.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? Call our listener line at 317-721-7124, shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAProject, or check us out on Facebook. Looking for a transcript or show notes from today’s show? Head on over to www.eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. Find more shows like this, plus much more, over at accessibilitychannel.com. That was your Assistance Technology Update. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals Crossroads in Indiana.