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Feel The View: New car tech allows blind passengers to 'see' the road

<i>Image: The News Market</i>
<i>Image: The News Market</i>

From rolling hills to mountain ranges, views make any road trip memorable but for blind passengers this is part of the experience that they miss.

A prototype smart car window aims to change this – by enabling blind or partially-sighted people to visualise passing scenery through touch.

Allowing the blind to 'see'

Feel The View takes pictures that are turned into high-contrast monochrome images. These are then reproduced on the glass using special LEDs.

READ: Driverless cars give hope to blind - are automakers onboard?  

By touching the image, different shades of grey vibrate with a range of 255 intensities, allowing passengers to touch the scene and rebuild in their mind the landscape in front of them.

Feel The View was conceived and developed by our team in Italy and GTB Roma, in collaboration with Aedo – a local start-up that specialises in devices for the visually impaired.

“We seek to make people’s lives better and this was a fantastic opportunity to help blind passengers experience a great aspect of driving. The technology is advanced, but the concept is simple – and could turn mundane journeys into truly memorable ones," said our spokesman Mac Alù Saffi.

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