The following guest post was originally published by CDMN hub TRTech and is published here with permission.
Close your eyes. In a world where there is no light or dark, you use the vibrancy of your other senses to build mental pictures of the world around you.
The one in 35 Canadians who are visually impaired1 face technology exclusion, reduced mobility, and under-employment due to a lack of commercial products and technology solutions that fully address their needs.
Calgary-based Invici Technologies envisions technology access as a catalyst for opening doors to a world of opportunity for the visually impaired – tapping touch-based innovation to enhance classroom learning experiences that lie at the heart of enablement.
Invici’s new product – the Invici Interface – generates a rich multimedia experience using proprietary tactile display devices that reproduce graphic imagery (normally displayed on a computer screen as pixels of light). Think of it as replacing vision with stimulation of the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions directly to the user’s fingers, hands or body.
This system is further enhanced by motion capture technologies, custom user interface software, speech recognition, and text to speech interactivity. Commercial deployment of the Invici Interface will be supported by an open source software development environment and an integrated online marketplace where users can buy and distribute new digital tactile media on a fee-per-download basis.
“The major difficulties with most tactile technologies (referred to as “haptics”) involve unclear spatial frames of reference, high product costs, and content creation,” says Doug Hagedorn, CEO & Founder, Invici Technologies. “The Invici solution addresses these challenges.”
TRTech recently worked with Invici to conduct an Opportunity Analysis to scope market opportunity, define a design and manufacturing roadmap, and to design software solution architecture. The K-12 education sector has been identified as an attractive first market for the Invici Interface – particularly for visually impaired students in the STEM (Science, Technology, Education, Mathematics) subjects.
“TRTech really helped us look at the bigger picture with our technology development and commercialization plans,” Doug says. “Sometimes when you’re in startup mode you get narrowly focused on what you have to get done for tomorrow or next week. They really helped step back and work backwards from our long-term strategic goals so that what we do today will pay off down the road.”
The Invici Interface is anticipated to be launched in March, 2014. A leveraging of the Invici Interface, called Invici Classroom, will be a networked installation of Invici Interface devices that integrates the functionality of a whiteboard, wiki, textbook, and tablet into one flexible interface so that teachers and students can interact with shared content.