Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

Mobility instructor Peter Dunn told me that one of these days I will need a guide dog. Cane training was useful, but I am seldom where a cane is essential for me to avoid falling off precipices or down stairs.

One day on one of our practice walks, with Peter correcting most of my departures from approved techniques (“A cane will not stop a log truck!...You have to look at the traffic signal and think about which part is lit, not just listen for oncoming vehicles!”), he described how it would be to use a guide dog—how I would hold a horizontal handle attached to the dog’s harness.

To simulate this, he took the cane and held it in such a way that I could use it the way I would use the harness handle. This did not work well for me because I don’t have natural balance. The messages from my cochlea don’t get to the right balance processing centers. Touching walls, doorways and furniture helps, and so does a solid footing underneath. When using a cane on the ground, I found that it provided helpful “feedback” for balance, while also helping me find important boundaries. I often carry a folding white cane if I will be in unfamiliar territory.

But the moving “harness handle” threw off my balance big time. I am not sure what would compensate for my combination of mobility challenges: very limited peripheral vision, blur and drop-outs even within my fields of vision, and lousy balance.

Whatever the solution would be, I am thinking it will be “high tech.” Maybe it will be something on the order of the Force Illusions wearable device being worked on at NTT Communications Laboratories.

Tomohiro Amemiya is a cognitive scientist, and he has been plugging away at this technology for years. What he seeks to develop would be far advanced from the existing gadgets that vibrate to warn users about obstacles. The Force Illusion creates a sensation of being pulled.

Haptic technology recreates or extends the sense of touch by applying forces or vibrations to the user.

Amemiya says the “force display” they are calling Buru-Navi3 “exploits the nonlinearity of human haptic perception to induce force sensation. A small mass in the device oscillates along a single axis with asymmetric acceleration, which produces a brief, strong force in one direction and a long, unnoticeable one in the other.”

This is said to create the illusion of being pulled steadily along, or being pushed.

Visually impaired test subjects have used prototypes with enough success to make Amemiya believe the wearable technology will work as substitutes for guide dogs, providing the signals that could be felt in a harness handle. “Probably it can be attached to a white cane,” he adds.

Also, such devices would be evacuation aids for those with vision or hearing loss, to assist them during fire or weather emergencies.

Compasses, routing systems or GPS functions will be needed for the devices to operate. Some have been installed in smartphones and wearables, with promising results.

World Health Organization (WHO) stats tell us that there are some 285 visually impaired people in the world. Most of them in developed countries use white canes as navigation aids, but vibrating smartshoes have been developed to the point of being tested.

There are rumors that Microsoft is working on a smart headband, which would help the blind “see” what is near them, through audio descriptions and signals.

Amemiya believes haptics fit into wearable tech because they touch the skin.  A major challenge is making the devices small enough. The smaller the item, the less intense the oscillation. BuruNavi3 creates force illusions when the user pinches it between fingertips. Amemiya likes this approach because fingertips are so rich in receptors that they can respond to weaker sensations than most other skin areas. That would seem to make it impractical to mount Buru-Navi3 in a watch, at least at this stage of development. Other force-illusion devices may have practical uses in the growing field of “wearables.”

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A technology hub that is described as a city of knowledge? Where?

No, not California, or Texas, or Utah, or New York. (True, for a while there seemed to be the prospect of a technology hub the size of a village, in Mansfield, but that didn’t happen, did it!)

Maybe Switzerland? India? Nope. Give up?

Okay, the new tech city will be Yachay.

What, you never heard of Yachay? That’s because it hasn’t been built yet. And Yachay is a Quechua word. Quechua is the language spoken by the indigenous peoples of the Andes.

Specifically, the Andes in Ecuador, a country where most other people speak Spanish. Yachay will be built in a part of the city of Urcuqui, 50 miles from Quito, the capital. It will be a “ciudad de conocimiento,” or city of knowledge, if things go according to plan.

The national government is putting $1 billion into the project. It is hoped that Ecuador can become less dependent on crude oil exports, if it provides a good location for tech companies.  

There will be a research university, followed by a business park with labs and incubators. Tourists will want to take side trips there from the famous ruins and treks into rainforests to see exotic creatures.

What all will be explored in Yachay? Promising developments in biotech, agriculture, drugs to combat disease, automation and many other cutting-edge discoveries.

Yachay is pretty much a brainchild of President Rafael Correa. Some think the idea can be traced to Correa’s sojourn in the U.S. in the 1990s when he earned a master’s degree in economics here.

It will be interesting to see how successful the Yachay project is. I wish we had a similar undertaking somewhere in the Seneca Highlands…