Tactical Navigation Tools is working on a hands-free wearable device that uses sensors to find obstacles and vibrations to alert wearers of them.
The New York-based company said the device, known as Eyeronman, could be helpful to blind people, as well as soldiers and firefighters, according to Fox News.
The World Health Organization says close to 285 million people around the world are visually impaired. However, most blind people in developed countries still use a white cane to navigate.
Dr. JR Rizzo, a rehabilitation doctor at NYU Langone Medical Center and the company's founder and chief medical advisor, was diagnosed with choroideremia when he was 15 years old. Choroideremia is a rare retinal degenerative disease that results in progressive loss of vision. Rizzo, now legally blind, believes blind people should have more advanced sensory prostheses, Discovery News reported.
Rizzo said that when soldiers return from war, "the ones with limb loss are getting expensive devices, but the ones with vision loss- we're giving them a stick. It's a little ridiculous.
"I don't care what the vision loss is from."
He added that the device is aimed at increasing mobility and getting people involved in society again.
Eyeronman includes a vest featuring sensor and emitters for lidar, ultrasound and infrared. Input from these sensors is converted into vibrations in a T-shirt made out of electro-active polymers. If there is an object on the user's lower left, for example, the lower left part of the shirt would vibrate, Discovery News reported.
The device's developers said the system is built to give the user 360-degree detection of obstacles.
The Eyeronman system is currently in a prototype stage, Fox News reported. Rizzo said that since not all of the sensors will work ideally in every environment, the researchers must find out which ones work best and figure out inexpensive ways in which they can be made.
"There are lots of challenges, but I don't think any are to the point where we can't get on top of them," he said.
