A compact sensor system for reading Braille

Author

Okuyama, Takeshi ; Tanaka, Mami

Author_Institution

Dept. of Bioeng. & Robot., Tohoku Univ., Sendai, Japan

fYear

2011

fDate

9-12 Oct. 2011

Firstpage

736

Lastpage

740

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the development of the wearable sensor system for recognizing Braille. We have developed a compact wearable sensor using a Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) film. The sensor output is obtained with the sensor mounted onto a fingertip moving over Braille manually. The operation examination for visually-impaired and healthy subjects who are blindfolded is carried out. From the results, it is clarified that they can´t use the sensor easily. In order to solve this problem, the structure of sensor is improved based on the opinions of the visual impaired persons. Then the operation examination with improved sensor is carried out again. The obtained results show that the improved sensor has the advancement of operability.

Keywords

biomedical equipment; handicapped aids; polymer films; sensors; Braille reading; Braille recognition; compact sensor system; compact wearable sensor; healthy person; polyvinylidene fluoride film; visually impaired person; Robot sensing systems; Sensor systems; Shape; Support vector machine classification; Thumb; Visualization; Braille; PVDF film; operation examination; signal processing; tactile sensor;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2011 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Anchorage, AK

ISSN

1062-922X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0652-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSMC.2011.6083729

Filename

6083729