Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!ajpo.sei.cmu.edu!griest
From: griest@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Tom Griest)
Subject: Re: micro-plungers
Message-ID: <1992Jul20.191047.24832@sei.cmu.edu>
Keywords: blind Braille compressed robots
Sender: netnews@sei.cmu.edu (Netnews)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute
References: <kkoehn.711581003@sfu.ca>
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 19:10:47 GMT
Lines: 28

In article <kkoehn.711581003@sfu.ca> kkoehn@fraser.sfu.ca (Kaari David Koehn) writes:
>For a possible challenge project, I'm thinking of a
>display device for the blind.  
>Don't laugh: my concept is a grid of small plungers that can be
>raised and lowered via computer control to show readable braille.
>

I wish you the best of luck.  Advancing technology for the impaired is
a worthwhile objective.  Once upon a time, I organized a meeting
sponsored by the IEEE-CS (I was chapter chairman for Chicago section)
to help develop aids for the handicapped.  This program was directed
by a professor at The Johns Hopkins University [I believe their medical
school- sorry I've lost the details].  In any case, one of the projects that
came out of the meeting was a device that used a special platen with a
conventional dot-matix printer to achieve a low-cost braille printer.

I don't know much about how braille characters are actually recognized
as the fingers are swept across the page, but you might be able to
have a small matrix of "dots" pushed by standard dot-matrix selenoids
with the person reading by sliding the matrix along a rail.  The computer
would sense the movement of the matrix and display the correct pattern
under the finger of the reader.  This is like a "virtual reality" device
for the blind???

   Good luck!

    Tom Griest

