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A blog dealing with sensory substitution and other esoteric concepts and technologies like speech-recognition and chaos theory

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Sensory substitution

Steps for identifying a shape with the vOICe

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I am often asked how I identify shapes with the vOICe. Here is the answer to that question.

1. Here the soundscape of a given shape.

2. Decode the soundscape using the defined sound schema of the vOICe.

3. Consider the context in which I’m listening to a soundscape.

4. If required, move my camera closer or further away from the object to get a sense of perspective.

5. Come up with an answer.

6. If required, verify the answer.

Let me illustrate this with an example.

1. I hear a soundscape. The soundscape consists of several ascending tomes.

2. Since I know the sound schema that the vOICe uses, I know that ascending tomes represent height. So, I’m looking at a series of vertical lines.

3. I now apply context. That is I consider where I’m standing. In this case, I’m standing in a balcony.

4. I now move around a little in the balcony and change the camera position. The sound does change but the vertical lines are still there.

5. At this point, I conclude that I’m probably looking at a railing that has vertical supports that move towards the floor.

6. I now with a reasonable degree of confidence walk up to the object and touch it. As luck would have it, this did indeed turn out to be a balcony railing. The railing had rods that ran from the bottom of the railing to the floor of the balcony.

Finding that elusive glass of water

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Just another success with the vOICe this time the mobile version. I was able to find a glass of water on a somewhat cluttered dining table. The problem in such situations is that I tend to swing my arm slowly but there are chances of the glass falling. This has happened more than once. I took some time to examine the table in the general area where I knew the glass to be. I was feeling lazy so was not using earphones. Still, I was looking for a tall object. The high pitch indicating a vertical line was all I needed to move my hand to the glass.

I had the vOICe set to 4d audio and had maxed out the sampling rate and the volume.

Pranav

Lunch at the Delhi Golf Course with the vOICe

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I went for lunch to the Delhi Golf Course this afternoon. I took the vOICe with me to see whether I could see the flags they put on the greens to mark the holes. I switched on the vOICe in the golf course bar. I was able to see the bottles behind the counter and to see the counter itself.
As I moved towards the green, I was able to see the walls and other things such as some bamboo plants and some trees. There were also other structures like tea stalls that I saw in the view. Walking on to the green however was difficult since due to the poor viewing angle of my webcam, I was unable to see the ground very well. There were a few slopes and a couple of bumps but I did not see them. I was unable to see the flag due to the image saturation of the webcam’s sensor. I should have seen a vertical line with something on it but that did not happen. This was around noon.

I was however able to see the blades of the diesel mowing machine and for once did not have to touch it to make out what it looked like.
The swimming pool was also a disappointment since I was unable to make out the difference between it and the ground. Both were smooth structures. Lucky I had my sited father with me otherwise this story would have had a different ending. I am not sure what went wrong and I will get a movie of all this the next time. Reaching for the laptop in my backpack to set all those options is not easy and I forgot the speech command to take a snapshot.

I am becoming better at identifying doorways and I need to keep reminding myself that silence in part of the view means an obstacle is very close. There was a fire hydrant which was fascinating. I could make out the circular valve and the box in which the hose was stored. That box though blocked the light so I had to step back a bit to see it clearly.

The inside of the clubhouse was relatively less well lit so I lost a lot of visual input. I was unable to make out the spiral stairs since part of them were poorly lit from the perspective of my webcam. Things changed when I walked back into the bar. There were some dark patches in the view and plenty of unidentifiable shapes which upon later examination proved to be parts of chairs and tables.

Lunch was a disaster since I had a hard time looking at my plate and the wires were obstructing my mouth. I had to be really really careful to ensure that I did not stab a wire with my fork. The close talk microphone of my Plantronics DSP 400 headset did a good job such that I was able to issue commands to the vOICe without problems.

The return journey in the car was uneventful except for my looking out the side windows and the front windscreen. I have movies of this and am trying to figure out how to upload them. They are 16 and 54 MB in size.

Once I reached home, I took a look at the staircase I have to climb if I need to gain access to the first floor and above. I was able to see this in the lower part of the view but that was only after my mother switched on the staircase lights. These steps are quite big and I will post a picture of them in a subsequent post.
Pranav