BenVision: Navigating with Music

On Tech & Vision With Dr. Cal Roberts

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National Geographic photographer and conservationist Jaime Rojo has spent decades capturing the beauty and fragility of the monarch butterfly. Their epic migration is one of nature’s most breathtaking spectacles, but their survival is under threat. In this episode, Jaime shares how his passion for photography and conservation led him to document the monarchs’ journey. He and host Brian Lowery discuss the deeper story behind his award-winning images, one about resilience, connection, and the urgent need to protect our natural world. See Jaime's story on the monarch butterflies at his website: rojovisuals.com , and follow Brian Lowery at knowwhatyousee.com .…

год назад 31:34

MP3•Главная эпизода

This podcast is about big ideas on how technology is making life better for people with vision loss.

When it comes to navigation technology for people who are blind or visually impaired, many apps utilize voice commands, loud tones or beeps, or haptic feedback. In an effort to create a more natural, seamless experience, the team at BenVision has created a different type of system that allows users to navigate using musical cues instead!

For this episode, Dr. Cal spoke with BenVision’s CEO and co-founder, Patrick Burton, along with its Technology Leadd, Aaditya Vaze. They shared about the inspiration behind BenVision, how they’re able to create immersive soundscapes that double as navigation aids, and the exciting future applications this technology could offer.

The episode also features BenVision’s other co-founder and Audio Director, Soobin Ha. Soobin described her creative process for designing BenVision’s soundscapes, how she harnesses the power of AI, and her bold vision of what’s to come.

Lighthouse Guild volunteer Shanell Matos tested BenVision herself and shares her thoughts on the experience. As you’ll hear, this technology is transformative!

The Big Takeaways

Why Music? Navigation technology that uses voice, tone, or haptics can create an added distraction for some users. But the brain processes music differently. Instead of overloading the senses, for some users music works alongside them, allowing them to single out separate sound cues, or take in the entire environment as a whole. Like how the different instruments correspond to various characters in “Peter and the Wolf,” BenVision assigns unique musical cues to individual objects.
User Experience: Shanell Matos appreciated how BenVision blends in more subconsciously, allowing her to navigate a space without having to be as actively engaged with the process.
Additional Applications: BenVision began as an augmented reality program, and its creators see a potential for it to grow beyond a navigational tool to expand for use by people who are visually impaired or fully sighted. For example, it could be used to create unique soundscapes for museums, theme parks, and more, augmenting the experience in exciting new ways.
The Role of AI: Artificial Intelligence already plays a big role in how BenVision works, and its creators see it being even more important in the future. BenVision already harnesses AI for object detection and its companion app uses AI to provide instant voice support about the immediate surroundings if needed. Moving forward, AI could be used to help instantaneously generate new sound cues or to help users customize their experience at the press of a button.

Tweetables

“We thought that if the human brain can learn echolocation and we have this amazing technology that’s available to us in the modern day, then why can’t we make echolocation a little bit more intuitive and perhaps a little bit more pleasant.” — Patrick Burton, BenVision CEO & Co-Founder
“You can think of it like a bunch of virtual speakers placed at different locations around the user. So like a speaker on a door or a couch or a chair. And then there are sounds coming from all these virtual speakers at the same time.” — Aaditya Vaze, BenVision Technology Lead
“I want to gamify this idea so that the user can actually find some interest and joy by using it, rather than just find it only helpful, but also [to create ] some pleasant feeling.” — Soobin Ha, BenVision Audio Director & Co-Founder
“So if there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of conversations happening, a lot of sounds happening, a lot of movement happening. It’s really difficult to keep up with what everything is doing. Whereas with music, it’s not as difficult to pick out layers.” – Shanell Matos, Lighthouse Guild Volunteer

Pertinent Links

35 эпизодов

#Tech #News #Tech News #Cathleen Wirts #Lighthouse Guild #Big Ideas

BenVision: Navigating with Music

On Tech & Vision With Dr. Cal Roberts

published год назад

MP3•Главная эпизода

This podcast is about big ideas on how technology is making life better for people with vision loss.

Lighthouse Guild volunteer Shanell Matos tested BenVision herself and shares her thoughts on the experience. As you’ll hear, this technology is transformative!

The Big Takeaways

Why Music? Navigation technology that uses voice, tone, or haptics can create an added distraction for some users. But the brain processes music differently. Instead of overloading the senses, for some users music works alongside them, allowing them to single out separate sound cues, or take in the entire environment as a whole. Like how the different instruments correspond to various characters in “Peter and the Wolf,” BenVision assigns unique musical cues to individual objects.
User Experience: Shanell Matos appreciated how BenVision blends in more subconsciously, allowing her to navigate a space without having to be as actively engaged with the process.
Additional Applications: BenVision began as an augmented reality program, and its creators see a potential for it to grow beyond a navigational tool to expand for use by people who are visually impaired or fully sighted. For example, it could be used to create unique soundscapes for museums, theme parks, and more, augmenting the experience in exciting new ways.
The Role of AI: Artificial Intelligence already plays a big role in how BenVision works, and its creators see it being even more important in the future. BenVision already harnesses AI for object detection and its companion app uses AI to provide instant voice support about the immediate surroundings if needed. Moving forward, AI could be used to help instantaneously generate new sound cues or to help users customize their experience at the press of a button.

Tweetables

“We thought that if the human brain can learn echolocation and we have this amazing technology that’s available to us in the modern day, then why can’t we make echolocation a little bit more intuitive and perhaps a little bit more pleasant.” — Patrick Burton, BenVision CEO & Co-Founder
“You can think of it like a bunch of virtual speakers placed at different locations around the user. So like a speaker on a door or a couch or a chair. And then there are sounds coming from all these virtual speakers at the same time.” — Aaditya Vaze, BenVision Technology Lead
“I want to gamify this idea so that the user can actually find some interest and joy by using it, rather than just find it only helpful, but also [to create ] some pleasant feeling.” — Soobin Ha, BenVision Audio Director & Co-Founder
“So if there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of conversations happening, a lot of sounds happening, a lot of movement happening. It’s really difficult to keep up with what everything is doing. Whereas with music, it’s not as difficult to pick out layers.” – Shanell Matos, Lighthouse Guild Volunteer

Pertinent Links

35 эпизодов

#Tech #News #Tech News #Cathleen Wirts #Lighthouse Guild #Big Ideas

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This podcast is about big ideas on how technology is making life better for people with vision loss. Lots of people have voice-controlled smart home assistants like Siri, Google, or Alexa in their homes…. to listen to the news or to set timers. But they can do so much more! David Frerichs, Principal Engineer, Alexa Experience at Amazon on the aging and accessibility team, shares his design philosophy for making voice assistants more inclusive, and the preferred mode of engagement for every user. He also shares that the next stage of smart home assistants will be ambient computing, where your devices will intuit your needs without you speaking them. We talk with Lighthouse Guild client Aaron Vasquez, who has outfitted his home with smart home technology, and with Matthew Cho, a client who traveled to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to speak to the unmanned Orion Spacecraft via the Amazon Alexa on board, demonstrating that voice assistant technology can bring inclusivity and accessibility to many jobs and industries and are not just for the home anymore. The Big Takeaways: Alexa Onboard the Orion Spacecraft. NASA partnered with Amazon to use the Alexa voice-controlled smart assistant onboard the unmanned Orion spacecraft so that engineers could guide the spacecraft from Mission Control. This project tested the possibility of Alexa for space travel while demonstrating that voice-controlled smart assistants have uses beyond the home. Matthew Cho, an 18-year-old student and client of Lighthouse Guild had the opportunity to travel to Houston to be one of the volunteers to give voice commands to the spacecraft via an Amazon Alexa device while it hurtled through space. Accessibility and Preferences . David Frerichs, Principal Engineer, Alexa Experience at Amazon, and someone who works on the aging and accessibility team , has spent his career developing technology that adapts to the ever-changing needs of the user and has cultivated a design philosophy that makes clear that design choices (like voice control) that enable inclusivity for people who are blind can also become the preferred way that most users engage with a device or a tool. Curb cuts are a historical example. David often thinks in terms of “Hot tub safe computing.” What can a person do to engage with the device from their hot tub? Ambient Computing. David mentions ambient computing, the next phase of smart home technology, in which a network of devices in the built environment intuit and respond to a user's needs without the user even needing to speak a command. Smart Homes Today, Smart Industries Tomorrow. Aaron Vasquez is a smart home user. He uses Google Echo to power two smart lamps, operate his smart TV, and control a pet camera to oversee his rambunctious kitties when he’s not at home. As a person who is visually impaired, Aaron prefers voice command for running his home in this way. This episode asks how the smart home’s tools can be integrated into offices and industries to make these more accessible and inclusive spaces. Tweetables: “To be able to have a rocket be dependent on an AI without anybody having to control the spacecraft is, it is really amazing, and I feel that later on that they’ll be able to use it for much more things aside from space.” – Matthew Cho, student and client of Lighthouse Guild “So their goal was to eventually get different people to be able to go into space … They were trying to see if Alexa would work properly with all sorts of people, normal people. Not just astronauts, like regular, ordinary, everyday people.” – Matthew Cho, student and client of Lighthouse Guild “You have … permanent need, temporary need, situational need, and preferential need that really can inform us on … how we can address [a] barrier for the particular core use case. But if we do it well, it will serve a much broader community.” – David Frerichs, Principal Engineer, Alexa Experience at Amazon “We’re moving toward … ambient computing. That is … that the system should be able to respond to the needs of the customer, even if the customer doesn’t say anything. ... That’s … where the boundaries are and where it’s gonna continue to be pushed.” – David Frerichs, Principal Engineer, Alexa Experience at Amazon “We had seen this pack of smart bulbs and they were relatively cheap, and I was like, huh, that’s, that’s kind of cool. So we were like, you know what? Let’s get it. So we got ‘em, we hooked them up and that kind of is what started everything.” – Aaron Vasquez, smart home user and client of Lighthouse Guild “Honestly, it’s so much easier if I can ask Google a question and she can come up with the answer, then I’m better off that way instead of actually trying to look it up myself.” – Aaron Vasquez, smart home user and client of Lighthouse Guild Contact Us: Contact us at podcasts@lighthouseguild.org with your innovative new technology ideas for people with vision loss. Pertinent Links: Lighthouse Guild Alexa in Space David Frerichs…

1
New Approaches in Access: Smart Tools for Indoor Navigation and Information Transfer 39:13

2 years назад39:13

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39:13

This podcast is about big ideas on how technology is making life better for people with vision loss. Artifacts from Blackbeard’s sunken pirate ship are on display in the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, North Carolina. But now they are also accessible to visitors who are blind, thanks to the efforts of Peter Crumley, who spearheads the Beaufort Blind Project. In this episode, we ask: How can new technology help make sites like these as accessible to people who are blind as they are to sighted people? We profile three companies applying new technologies paired with smartphone capabilities, to make strides in indoor navigation, orientation, and information transfer. Idan Meir is co-founder of RightHear, which uses Apple’s iBeacon technology to make visual signage dynamic and accessible via audio descriptions. We check in with Javier Pita, CEO of the NaviLens QR code technology which we profiled in our first season to see what they have been developing in the last two years. Rather than iBeacons or QR codes, GoodMaps uses LiDAR and geocoding to map the interior of a space. We speak with Mike May, Chief Evangelist. Thanks to Peter Crumley, the North Carolina Maritime Museum is fully outfitted with GoodMaps, and will soon have NaviLens as well. As the prices of these tools come down, the key will be getting them into all the buildings, organizations, and sites of information transfer that people who are blind need to access – which is all of them. The Big Takeaways: Beaufort Blind Project. Peter Crumley, a blind resident of Beaufort, North Carolina, has advocated having accessibility tools brought to various parts of his hometown. Along the way, he helped the North Carolina Maritime Museum outfit itself with GoodMaps technology for indoor navigation, and with NaviLens QR codes for information transfer. Thanks to these new technologies, the museum artifacts are now accessible to everyone. RightHear. Idan Meir cofounded RightHear, which uses iBeacon technology paired with users’ smartphones to guide visitors who are blind through an indoor space. iBeacons send unique signatures via low Bluetooth signals to phones inside the radius. When these iBeacons are paired with areas of interest in a space (e.g. the front door, the counters, or the bathrooms) users can orient themselves within a space, and identify where they want to go and how they want to navigate to each location. RightHear translates the information embedded in each beacon into audio feedback for users. On the subject of feedback, Idan Meir is looking for beta testers to try out RightHear and provide him with constructive feedback. NaviLens. We profiled NaviLens QR code technology in an episode from our first season. In this episode, we follow up with Javier Pita to see what has been in development in the last two years. Since we last spoke, NaviLens has launched NaviLens 360, which uses magnets to help guide users who are blind to the NaviLens codes, even if their camera is having trouble picking up the code, making the app even more user-friendly. In addition, NaviLens has launched a partnership with Kellogg’s in Europe and North America to test the effectiveness of the Navilens code on consumer product packaging. GoodMaps. GoodMaps uses LiDAR technology to map a space. Lasers are sent out from the LiDAR sensor, and when they bounce back, they have captured distances from the point of origin. Institutions work with GoodMaps to pay for the mapping service, and then users can access the maps for free. The app uses audio to communicate navigational directions with users. Technological advancement. Each of these tools relies on component technologies that have gotten less expensive in recent years (iBeacons, QR Codes, and LiDAR). They are also able to exist because their target markets carry smartphones in their pockets, enabling these potential users to access the tools quickly and easily, without much additional hassle or investment. Distribution. In this episode, we profile three different approaches to broadening access to indoor navigation technology, including for orientation and information transfer, proving there are many ways to solve these problems. It is good that some of these tools can be paired, as has been done at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, and that users may be able to choose which tools work best for them. The key will be getting them into all the buildings, organizations, and sites of information transfer that people who are blind need to access – which is all of them. Tweetables: “The advocacy is so important; when you’re actually interfacing with the app to make the app better and make it work in a way that a blind person really needs it to work.” – Peter Crumley, Beaufort Blind Project “Well, it's gonna be built from blind perspective philosophy. So not only will it work for me — it will work for anyone, totally blind and fully sighted to give an interactive experience.” – Peter Crumley, Beaufort Blind Project “Imagine, if this technology will be in all the products, we will solve the problem of accessible packaging for all users.” – Javier Pita, NaviLens “The point is we have solved the last few yards of the wayfinding problem that is super important for a blind user. And this was born in New York City with the collaboration with the MTA and the department of transportation of New York City.” – Javier Pita, NaviLens “That camera picks up the environment and it compares it with that point cloud and says, “I see based on this particular image … that you are near the Starbucks,” or “You're near Gate 27.” –Mike May, GoodMaps “It was important and kind of obvious for us from the very early on, you know, that nothing about us without us. It was clear to us that we have to involve users in the process. –Idan Meir, RightHear Contact Us: Contact us at podcasts@lighthouseguild.org with your innovative new technology ideas for people with vision loss. Pertinent Links: Lighthouse Guild RightHear NaviLens GoodMaps…

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