"Take me there"âhaptic shoes for the visually impaired
“Le Chal,” meaning “take me there” in Hindi, is the name of a new walking aid for those with visual impairments: haptic (sense of touch) shoes, designed by an Indian student, Anirudh Sharma. He designed these during an MIT Media Lab workshop hosted at the College of Engineering in Pune, India. To be assisted by Le Chal shoes, an individual with a visual impairment needs to wear them while using a mobile phone with a global positioning system (GPS). An Internet auto-learning network acts as a navigation aid for someone wearing the shoes.
How does the technology work?
To make the aid work, before starting a trip on foot, the user has to state his final destination through an Android App or his Desktop, which is in sync with the shoes. Google Maps assists in obtaining maps, and turn-by-turn directions are loaded into the shoes. When the user starts walking, the GPS transmitter is fed with the location, using Google Maps. Data is sourced through the GPS and sent to the receivers located in the shoes, which in turn, generate a vibration effect to give the user an idea of direction and place. At turns, vibration feedback is activated in the shoes to indicate the direction for turning. The vibration’s length also depends upon the total distance to the destination. The shoes are intended to enhance the degree of independence people with visual impairments can experience in various navigational scenarios.
Sharma is planning to release the code of the shoes’ Android application and schematics to the public through the Arduino community channel. He is also planning to create a do-it-yourself (DIY) guide through an editable Wikipedia page where users can participate and help him create a better version of the technology.
But is it a breakthrough invention?
Anirudh Sharma and his team are not, however, the first ones to have conceptualized the idea of haptic shoes. Xiaoyan Fu and Dahai Li, from the University of Sydney, also undertook a study and came up with the idea of transferring and representing requested information through the design and use of haptic shoes. However, they wanted to convey stock market data to users via the haptic shoes they wore. These also employed computer and wireless connections, which drive the vibrating motor in the shoe, to transmit information to the receiver through the shoe.
A pending patent application at the USPTO is also about a method and apparatus for providing communications with haptic cues. After sensing an event via a component, a process occurs in which haptic cues are generated; input is generated in response to the event. The process retrieves a haptic signal from a tactile library in response to the input. Haptic feedback in response to the haptic signal is subsequently generated.
Hence, patenting Le Chal haptic shoes that Sharma has created may be difficult. These could be seen as merely providing a new use for already existing and known technology, which bars the shoes’ patentability according to most patent laws around the world.
But this may not stop Sharma from becoming a local hero. As is said, innovation is not about striking a breakthrough every time. It is also about applying ideas from one field to another. And sometimes, the difference that makes is miraculous!