NUS | Smart Systems Institute

Shopping for groceries is a common activity for many of us, but for visually impaired people, identifying grocery items can be daunting. A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore’s School of Computing (NUS Computing) introduced AiSee, an affordable wearable assistive device that helps people with visual impairment ‘see’ objects around them with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

Individuals with visual impairment face daily hurdles, particularly with object identification which is crucial for both simple and complex decision-making. While breakthroughs in AI have dramatically improved visual recognition capabilities, real-world application of these advanced technologies remains challenging and error-prone.

AiSee, which was first developed in 2018 and progressively upgraded over a span of five years, aims to overcome these limitations by leveraging state-of-the-art AI technologies.

“With AiSee, our aim is to empower users with more natural interaction. By following a human-centred design process, we found reasons to question the typical approach of using glasses augmented with a camera. People with visual impairment may be reluctant to wear glasses to avoid stigmatisation. Therefore, we are proposing an alternative hardware that incorporates a discreet bone conduction headphone,” said lead researcher of Project AiSee Associate Professor Suranga Nanayakkara, who is from the Department of Information Systems and Analytics at NUS Computing.

The user simply needs to hold an object and activate the in-built camera to capture an image of the object. With the help of AI, AiSee will identify the object, and it will also provide more information when queried by the user.

(Source — NUS News: https://news.nus.edu.sg/ai-powered-eye-for-visually-impaired-people/)