Project AVARE

India is home to the largest population of visually-impaired persons (VIPs) in the world, accounting for around 40% of the world’s total blind population as measured by the World Health Organization (WHO).

AVARE (Augmented Virtual And Real Environments) is a project with a goal of empowering VIPs to experience rich multi-modal interactions in everyday activities ranging from work and social interactions to entertainment and exploration. We also aim to achieve these goals while remaining affordable in emerging markets.

AVARE has currently resulted in three specific technologies, the FReAD Smart Belt, the ReSAC immersive audio platform, and a Virtual Reality (VR) environment called Empatheyes for empathetic understanding of visual impairments.

FReAD (Feature Reading Accessibility Device) is a “smart belt” for VIPs that enhances the tactile exploration of an object with voiced descriptions. It was designed as an effort to apply modern computer vision to the common problem of exploring everyday objects. The belt contains an embedded camera that senses grasps, then subsequently analyzes text and objects for the user.

ReSAC (Responsive Spatial Audio Cloud) is a technology for intuitively describing the world in audio form to a VIP. ReSAC aids in a user’s iterative exploration of new environments by verbalizing details (objects, people, aesthetics) as a spatialized “cloud” of words and sounds.

Empatheyes is an immersive virtual environment that provides a realistic simulation of a broad spectrum of visual impairments. It has broad uses in both clinical and informal settings. The system may also help design vision augmentations to counter the impact of the impairments.