Hyderabad: Microsoft India employees have developed a
technology that would help for hearing and speech impaired people to
communicate with others.
The employees have also developed a device for the blind
that helps them navigate their way to destination safely through objects in an
indoor space.
A team of employees of the company, led by Bangaru
Venkatesh, said 'Kinect Bridge' technology, developed for hearing and speech
impaired people, will recognise simple finger or spelling as input and convert
the symbol into text or speech.
The technology was developed using Kinect device that
detects objects without touching. It is used by Microsoft for gaming .
'Hand gestures will be recognised by the device and will be
converted as text or voice. This is useful for visually impaired people also.
They can just speak to the computer and it will be converted into text.
'This is the first step. Commercialising will be taken up by
Microsoft. This is an application developed by them (employees). They can put
it up for 'moonlighting'. Microsoft has no liability on these applications,
'Using a real-time scanning, the person is directed whether
he should move further or not. A built-up voice will give suggestions to the
person based on the distance between the blind person and object,' Rishabh
Varma, an associate of Microsoft India who along with three of his colleagues
developed Kinectacles application, said.
The intention is to help visually impaired to navigate on
their own indoors without the help of other people. It has one normal VGA
camera and one depth camera, he added…..
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