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Odisha student designs glasses for visually-impaired, will help deaf people too
The idea of making a special glass came to the teenager’s mind when he saw visually-impaired people of his village wear dark glasses, but it did not help them.
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A class 8 student of a school in Odisha has designed special glasses for visually and hearing impaired that can give out signals or beeps when an object of any kind is in the vicinity.
Priyabrata Sahoo, a class 8 student at the Prahallad Chandra Brahmachari High School at Adanga in Purushottampur in Jajpur district has come up with the prototype of guiding sensor glasses for visually impaired that would help them as well as those who are both blind and hearing impaired.
The idea of making a special glass came to the teenager’s mind when he saw visually-impaired people of his village wear dark glasses, but it did not help them a bit. “I got the idea when I saw a visually impaired elderly person of my village facing difficulty in moving around without support. So I decided to do something and discussed the same with my science teacher Tusharkanti Mishra,” said Sahoo.
At the Atal Tinkering Laboratory in his school funded by the central government and Niti Aayog, Sahoo made two glasses - one for the visually-impaired using ultrasonic sensors and a buzzer and another for both visually and hearing impaired using an ultrasonic sensor, buzzer and vibrator motor. The ultrasonic sensor and buzzer would alert the visually impaired person as soon as someone approaches them.
The Atal Lab in his school was started in August last year. ATAL is an approach of the Central Government of India to create an environment of scientific temperament, innovation, creativity amongst Indian students. The objective of this scheme is to foster curiosity, creativity, and imagination in young minds and inculcate skills such as design mindset, computational thinking, adaptive learning, physical computing etc. Young children will get a chance to work with tools and equipment to understand what, how and why aspects of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).
Sahoo’s science teacher Mishra said the teenager was so committed to his work that he would even come to the lab on Sundays to work on his invention.
Sahoo said he wants to apply for a patent on his invention after upgrading the glasses by adding a GPS motor and speakers to them. “The glasses will be connected with Google Maps and will be voice-controlled. Once a person enters an address, they will be guided to it automatically,” he said.
