New Delhi: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur has announced a partnership with Manuel Spain for the mass production of “haptic smart watch For him blind and partially sighted“. The haptic smartwatch comes in two variants and has 12 touch-sensitive hour markers arranged above the dial face. Users will need to scan the markers with their fingers. The smartwatch has been developed by Professor Siddhartha Panda and Vishwaraj Srivastava of the National Center for Flexible Electronics in IIT Kanpur.
Watches that are currently available for the blind and visually impaired can be broadly categorized as tactile, speaking, vibrating, and braille-based. These watches have their limitations. There is a risk of needle breakage on tactile watches, similarly talking watches do not offer a private mode of communication. Like vibration watches, they are complicated, while braille watches are expensive. The haptic clock developed at IIT Kanpur aims to address the drawbacks of all these conventional technologies and offer a seamless user experience.
how the clock works
The haptic watch developed at IIT Kanpur has 12 touch-sensitive hour markers arranged above the dial face. The user is required to scan the markers with their fingers. For example, to check the time 3:40, clock markers 3 and 8 will be called active markers. The vibration pulse will be generated by touching the active markers. A long press on the 3 will indicate the hours and a short press on the 8 will indicate the minutes to check the time of 3:40.
The watch is a mix of tactile and vibration watches. The complexity of the vibration watch that generates more than 20 pulses has been reduced to 2 pulses, and the fragile nature of a tactile watch has been removed, resulting in a watch that is robust, easy to use, private, and affordable.
How the smartwatch solves the drawbacks of traditional watches
The smart watch model is equipped with smart functions to indicate health parameters such as heart rate, step count, hydration reminder, and smart timer to set a short timer with a simple gesture.
Existing smartwatches for the blind and partially sighted use audio-based output and lack privacy. The smart watch developed by IIT Kanpur, which offers a touch interface to display time and health parameters, solves these drawbacks. The use of innovative haptic icons makes menu navigation easy and a simple gesture like double tapping can open a particular health monitoring app. These numbers communicate in a similar way to time.
