This is a paper on the the vOICe co-authored by Jamie Ward and Dr. Meijer.
The abstract is here
Visual experiences in the blind induced by an auditory sensory substitution device
vOICe
Interactive training facilitates active full-body use of The vOICe
Zachary Reynolds “novel training paradigm for The vOICe involving active, cooperative tasks”. A popular task involved users using the vOICe to play a form of tag in which two subjects wearing The vOICe try to turn off their opponent’s luminescent red
hearts which are attached to their backpacks.
A program to learn shapes using the vOICe
I have created a shape exerciser to compliment the exercise mode of the vOICe. The program lets you build your own shape library for exercising. The shape exerciser is a tool for practicing shape recognition. You can navigate to the following link for downloading the shape exerciser.
Shape Exerciser Zip Installer
With thanks to Jacob Kruger for the file hosting.
Nuthatches
The idea behind this post is to illustrate how color and some descriptions can be used to interpret an image that a person has never seen. As always, these images have been percieved using the The vOICe.
<a href="http://www.blindliving.com/"A friend posted about nuthatches on twitter so I decided to take a look at them. There are several kinds of nuthatches but for our purposes, we will focus on the white-breasted nuthatch and the red-breasted nuthatch.
See the below link for the red-breasted nuthatch.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/PHOTO/MED/red_breasted_nuthatch_1.jpg
see the following link for a picture of the white-breasted nuthatch.
http://www.birdsasart.com/White-breasted-Nuthatch-soft-light-VERT-_H2D8927-McLeansville,-NC.jpg
I have never seen a bird before so do not have an idea of its shape. I know what a breast is. I heard the entire image and then decided to find the red breast. The red color filter did the job so I now knew where the breast was. I now slowed down the speed to quarter. There is a wavy line as you approach the right of the image at the left and reach the correct height. I suspect that is the stripe of the nuthatch but I cannot be sure. As for the wings and the bill, I do not know where they are. They are bound to be there but my knowledge of bird anatomy is rather limited to be able to find them.
As for the white-breasted nuthatch, not much to say except that the shape is interesting. The color filter does not help here but I have not tried all the color.
Also, I tried the skin filter and got silence. I take it that the skin filter is optimized for human skin?
Jacob Kruger pointed out that the orange filter gave the most interesting results in the red breasted nuthatche’s case. If the description at http://www.birdsource.org/ibs/IBSspecies/rebnut/index.html is correct, then the orange portion is the under part of the nuthatch.
Finally, to read more about the nuthatch, navigate to the following link.
http://www.cjwildlife.com/news/id=30/upside-down_birds___courtesy_of_the_vermont_institute_of_natural_science_-_vins.html
Visual experiences in the blind induced by an auditory sensory substitution device
See this paper dealing with the the vOICe in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.
A box of grapes
See this box of grapes on the counter in a shopping mall. You can see part of the counter and the box as well as the grapes.
There is a lot of pixel noise so the color filters do not work well here. The image was taken under artificial light.
fruits
Two monkeys
See this image of two monkeys. I took it using my Nokia E51 through a screen door that lead to the balconey of the guest house I was staying at. I believe they are in a “compromising” position.
The back of the monkeys is towards the camera. Slow down the image and you will be able to distinguish the individual monkeys.
2monkeys