Tuesday, April 6, 2010

kill.thatdamnpatient.com

kill.thatdamnpatient.com

Seeing Eye Dogs are soooooooo 2k9 ……..

Posted: 05 Apr 2010 07:15 PM PDT

I fucking loved daredevil growing up (I even like the movie …… which isn’t exactly the best Hollywood has to offer), one of the main reasons I like him is ’cause he never relied on anyone when he became blind, no seeing eye dogs, no Bengali guides (don’t lie I’ve seen it at least 6 times at outpatients …….. a blind old man/woman with a Bengali to show him/her the way), all he needed was his kickass Cain that was also his weapon of choice.

But daredevil wasn’t your typical blind person, he had the power to see sound and hear heartbeats and stuff so it’s not exactly fair to compare grandpa or grandma to him and yet I can’t help but feel that the blind among us haven’t exactly benefited from many of the advances in our field, we know how to prevent (well …. slow down) blindness in some cases but have never really found a cure for it ……. the best we could come up with was/is “go buy a dog and let him drag you around …….. oh and make sure you don’t step on his doo doo ……. ” and if you couldn’t afford one or in most cases can’t take care of one then you had to buy a Cain and trip and fall and fall again until you learned how to use it.

But thanks to the boffins in the US army and Brainport inc we finally have a solution …… or at least a better one than “Here’s a stick good luck and don’t poke any one with it”. And no it doesn’t require stem cells, a 16 hour surgery or a hundred billion dollars all you need is a tongue and a pair of glasses……..



It consists of 2 parts glasses and a plastic lolly pop you put under your tongue. The glasses have a camera that will take a picture and transmit it to the lolly pop which in turn transmitts the electrical signals to your tongue. The pattern of the signals tells you that the thing you’re looking at ……. well ….. looks like. It’s not super accurate yet and the current model only has 400 sensors but the “final production” model should have 4,000 sensors.

And if anyone is interested (I’m sure one person reading this must know at least one blind person) the brainport website is this and the cost to buy the device and train someone is around 18,000 pounds …….
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