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 visualize passing scenery through touch.
Feel The View, being developed for Ford, takes pictures that are turned into high-contrast monochrome images. These are then reproduced on the glass using special LEDs.
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 a Ford team in Italy and GTB Roma, in collaboration with Aedo, a local start-up that specializes 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,” said Marco Alù Saffi, a Ford spokesman. “The technology is advanced, but the concept is simple, and could turn mundane journeys into truly memorable ones.”
