Oogle Andrew Ebaugh Saurav Chatterjee Shopping assistant for the vision impaired

Basic concept of Oogle What does it do?  Oogle allows blind people to locate and identify items via RFID technology. What is it good for?  Blind people can shop by themselves.  Facilitates in identifying items once they get home.  It can substitute Braille signs.

Currently, blind individuals cannot navigate a grocery store independently. Have to depend on others to help with shopping (Braille stickers on products) Little choice on prices and brand of items being purchased Have to depend on others when checking out at the register Organizing their items once they return home is a problem Why is Oogle needed?

INDEPENDENCE & FREEDOM "The sense of accomplishment in doing it myself is a great feeling." - Brad Lingrand

The independence they want Give blind individuals a tool that enhances their shopping experience, providing:  Personal brand and price choices  Unassisted selection of items off the store shelves  More control at the checkout register  Putting away items without assistance

User Scenario Enabling sensor glove Arriving at the store Transmitting ID signal to glove Selecting items 4

User Scenario, cont. Putting away the groceries at home Listening to audio response at cash register 5 6

Architecture

Architecture, cont. Hardware components  RFID tags, reader in a glove form factor  Intel Personal Server  Product description via slappy board (soundcard) Software components  SQL database  DB query service  MP3 decoder

Implementation, cont. RFID scanner – mote running TinyOS transmits RFID tag scan to a mote in a CF card on personal server CF card mote – accessible as a serial port on personal server, /dev/tts/3 Serial forwarder service – dumps whatever is received on the serial port to listeners on a network port (4444 TCP) ODBS listener service – Connects to network port, and registers as a listening client, accepting forwarded packets.

Expected effort Necessary pieces  RFID scanner to personal server  Product descriptions pulled from database  Product description output to audio board Minimum functionality  Item is scanned, and audio description is sent to earpiece.

Big Unknowns What are you wrestling with right now?  RFID to TinyOS to Java  Audio drivers for the Slappy board What do you need help/advice with?  Slappy Board  TinyOS to Java

Burning Questions What are you wrestling with right now?  RFID readability on metal items. Cans require different tags.  Audio transfer to Slappy board Is this transfer fast enough if we use text-to-speech?

Related Work What products or research projects relate to this project?  RFID Glove – Intel Research, Adam Rea  Lingo Pal – Daniel Binuya and David Sunderland What ideas does it draw on and who has worked on them?  Adam Rea has made a wireless glove that reads RFIDs  Lingo Pal – RFID to output. What makes this project novel, if anything does?  It allows blind people to identify objects via RFID.

Evaluation How would you evaluate your project?  Can I get a audio description of an item when it is scanned?  Is the desired information (price, size, name, etc.) available? What performance tests are important?  Can one hear a description as soon as it is scanned (< 1 second)?

Evaluation What would you want to know from user studies?  Does it increase your sense of self accomplishment?  Is it low profile and subtle enough?  How would you change the information sent to your earpiece?