This pedestrian cross-walk system uses smart technology to ensure a safe flow of traffic

Posted on 04/04/2022 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Smartpass is a universal smart pedestrian cross-walk system.

The language of cross-walk signals is universal. When traveling to a new city, it can feel like such a relief knowing that you won’t have to pull out your pocket translator just to cross the street. While deciphering cross-walk signals is relatively simple, there are different road rules and forms of street etiquette that are unique to each city.

Designer: 2s.design studio

In driving cities like Los Angeles, jaywalking is generally frowned upon, but in New York, it’s an essential skill if you plan on being on time. In Poland, 2s.design studio has been at work on developing a universal smart pedestrian cross-walk system called Smartpass.

Aiming to create a cross-walk system that provides safety and comfort for all traffic participants, 2s.design studio’s Smartpass incorporates assistive features for pedestrians and vehicles that obey the cross-walk signals. When pedestrians approach the cross-walk, a central unit with built-in GSM and detection modules sends alerts to the system’s supplemental modules for pedestrians to cross safely.

Once the internal sensors detect oncoming pedestrian traffic, sound alerts are broadcasted and LED lights to illuminate to guide pedestrians to the other side of the street. Antiskid modules also trace the traffic lanes for cars to come to gradual stops as they let pedestrians walk across the street. While pedestrians cross the street, radar and monitoring modules indicate when it’s safe for cars to keep driving.

Designing Smartpass, 2s.design studio conducted research with the Institute of Roads and Bridges of the Warsaw University of Technology, which revealed that cross-walks can be made 30% safer by integrating smart cross-walk systems like Smartpass. Seeing the success of Smartpass in the city of Warsaw, the team of designers introduced the smart system to other European countries including Germany and Slovakia, holding onto the goal of opening up to manufacturers and representatives abroad.

The post This pedestrian cross-walk system uses smart technology to ensure a safe flow of traffic first appeared on Yanko Design.

This cabinet on wheels can fetch you things like a loyal canine

Posted on 05/01/2022 by JC Torres

There’s finally a robot for the home that’s not just for sucking up dirt on the floor.

Robots are coming, whether we like it or not. They may not be the kind that’s negatively portrayed in movies, at least not yet, but few of them can be considered “friendly,” even in appearance. Today’s robots also seem to stand on two opposite ends of a spectrum, with sophisticated but nightmarish Spots on one end and simplistic but single-purpose Roombas on the other. Few other robots are designed for home use, but a company backed by Roomba maker iRobot and the Amazon Alexa Fund is aiming to change that in the simplest but most useful way possible.

Designer: Labrador Systems

At first glance, this robot looks nothing like the typical robots you see both in homes (on the floor) and in factories. When it isn’t active, it looks more like a tall shelf with an open box compartment. In fact, the faux wooden sides of that compartment, available in Light Maple and Warm Teak colors, seem to be designed to blend with your furniture and masquerade as a simple shelf.

It’s anything but simple, of course, and this shelf on wheels can move around your house on its own at your beck and call. You can tell it to bring you your medicine or the plates for setting the table, or you can tell it to accompany you to the laundry room while it carries the washing load for you. Appropriately, this robot is named the Labrador Retriever.

In some cases, this robot is powered by some of the same technologies that robot vacuum cleaners use to navigate your house. After learning the lay of the land, it uses 3D vision to drive itself to or away from you, avoiding obstacles along its path. It can be controlled manually, through an app, or by voice, specifically through Amazon Alexa. It also has some special tricks of its own, like sliding a specially-designed Labrador-branded tray of food or medicine onto its shelf without any human intervention.

Unlike robot vacuum cleaners, the Labrador Retriever and its smaller sibling, the Labrador Caddie, aren’t just designed to make life easier. In fact, they were primarily envisioned to empower those with physical difficulties or handicaps to be productive and live normal lives. Of course, that means that these robots need to have designs that won’t haunt your dreams, and thankfully, the Labrador Retriever is as inconspicuous as a modern minimalist cabinet, contrary to what its name might suggest.

The post This cabinet on wheels can fetch you things like a loyal canine first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Award-Winning Breathing Assistive Stone expands and contracts to guide your meditation

Posted on 28/10/2020 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Prana, according to ancient yoga practice, is known to be the universal life energy, in which breathing helps flow through each of us and every other living thing; it keeps us alive. When energy channels are even partially blocked, this disrupts the flow of prana, which can lead to heightened feelings of stress or anxiety. Ayama means to extend, draw out, or regulate. Pranayama is the practice of breath control, which essentially helps clear out any blockages in energy channels that prevent our breathing from bringing us calm.

The makers behind Ayama, Wenxi Qi, and Hengbo Zhang received the iF Design Talent Award in 2019 for their breathing assistive device that helps those of us with anxiety reach a point of self-induced meditation. Ayama, which resembles a smooth, grey garden stone, is really a rhythmic breathing guide that, thanks to fully-integrated motors that run off an electric charge, expands and contracts according to pranayama breathing techniques. When we focus on our breathing and let it guide our peace of mind, then our parasympathetic nervous system is supported, which means our heart rate assumes a more natural-feeling rhythm and our otherwise tense muscles tend to relax in response. This is called a “relaxation response” and provides the purpose for this design.

With an intuitive interface, Ayama is self-explanatory and easy to follow. By pressing the main button on the grey stone, users can adjust the different modes of pranayama: ujjayi, sitali, kapalabhati, and nadhi sodhana. These varying breathing techniques help to quell different stressors, including body temperature and lack of concentration by helping the user achieve a generally calm state of mind. Additionally, Ayama comes with a wireless charger that mimics a miniature zen garden, which works as a friendly reminder that by just checking in with our emotional headspaces, we can practice pranayama anywhere, anytime. Without the help of physical aid, it can be difficult to incorporate healthful breathing techniques in public life. So, Ayama brings a sense of calm when considering how insurmountable battling anxiety can sometimes feel – all you have to do is press a button and breathe.

Designers: Wenxi Qi and Hengbo Zhang

This Home Gardening Assistive Device Sticks Into Your Plant’s Soil To Keep It Healthy!

Posted on 12/10/2020 by Shawn McNulty-Kowal

Activities like home gardening have held the attention of millennials and older generations alike for years, but with quarantine, they’ve risen exponentially in popularity. Taking care of houseplants not only amplifies the mood and intimacy of your home but also fills up your space in a way that other interior design options cannot replicate. Houseplants are so popular, sales are supposed to increase to $49.3 billion by 2023. Speaking to this, mostly thanks to social media, a quarter of that spending is attributed to houseplant owners between the ages of 18 and 34. Botanist, a gardening assistive device, was designed to make taking care of a plant more manageable for everyone. Sejin Park, based out of Seoul, designed Botanist because he saw the millennial generation’s love for houseplant culture and their preferred mode of communication: technology.

Millennials seem to take some heat from older generations for how often we’re on our phones and how disconnected from the world we are because of it. In order to make some sense of that tension, Park bridged a connection between the natural and mobile worlds. Botanist consists of three divided parts: touchscreen, connector, and the probe stick. The probe stick scans and analyzes your houseplant’s soil in order to communicate what the plant might need, which is displayed on Botanist’s screen. Through a speaker and touchscreen, the user is informed of the houseplants’ soil, pH, light, temperature, and humidity levels on easy-to-read, circular, gauges. The touchscreen then provides additional information, relaying how the user can maintain the plant’s health levels or cater to them. The connecter is what allows the information gathered from the probe stick to travel to the touchscreen. On its touchscreen, Botanist also lets users file their houseplants so that they’re easy to find and take care of.

The device pairs with your phone so that you can receive the latest information from your houseplant no matter how far from home you may be. Taking inspiration from devices like speakers, reusable water bottles, and other sustainable products, Park was sure to design this assistive device so that its purpose to maintain health and plant life reflected not only how its materials were sourced, but also so that its structure and look fit in amongst your houseplants. Your plants will practically take care of themselves.

Designer: Sejin Park

A Microsoft xCloud Adaptive Controller that brings mobile cloud-gaming to the specially-abled

Posted on 07/07/2020 by Sarang Sheth

Something tells me we’re a mere announcement away from Microsoft’s cloud gaming service – Project xCloud, and it only makes sense that when the announcement drops, Microsoft does its bit to make sure everyone has access to it, regardless of their location, and their abilities. The Adaptive Controller concept for xCloud takes Microsoft’s special-needs controller and gives it a couple of tweaks to make it ready for cloud-based mobile gaming. Fundamentally, the xCloud Adaptive Controller is the same as its predecessor, but with a few upgrades that make it mobile-ready, so the specially-abled can reap the benefits of the upcoming Project xCloud!

What’s visibly different about the xCloud Adaptive Controller is its acid-green device-docking station that lets you rest anything from a phone to a tablet (without having it tip over or slip, thanks to the use of high-grip rubber). Built with WiFi connectivity, the controller works as any wireless one would, allowing you to play games on mobile devices as well as with the Xbox console connected to a television. The xCloud Adaptive controller also houses an in-built battery, large enough for it to power the controller as well work as an external power source for you smartphone or tablet (so you can game for longer), along with the multiple USB and 3.5mm ports designed to plug in external buttons and pads, and even a pair of headphones.

Designer: Sarang Sheth

The Microsoft xCloud Adaptive Controller is a piece of fan-made conceptual work and isn’t affiliated with the Microsoft brand.

This assistive wearable camera reads any text that’s in front of you

Posted on 19/05/2020 by Sarang Sheth

It’s great for people looking to easily read foreign languages, but even better for people with weak eyesight to begin with.

The OrCam MyEye 2 feels a lot like what the Google Glass should have evolved to become. I’m talking about ditching the holographic crystal and focusing on the camera technology, combined with Google Lens’ identification algorithm. Designed to be a small, retrofittable wearable camera that attaches to any pair of spectacles, the MyEye 2 can identify objects in front of it and read any text within its frame.

The MyEye 2 is more assistive tech than consumer tech. It helps people with low visibility to ‘see’ things by actively translating text and identifying objects. Just point at anyone or anything and the MyEye 2 picks up your gesture, analyzing what (or who) you’re pointing at. If you’ve got text in front of you, the MyEye 2 begins reading it out, allowing you to easily read fine print like newspapers, menu cards, and ingredients lists without worrying about straining your eyes. The tech works for humans too, allowing you to point at familiar people and have the wearable identify them for you.

Given that it functions as a visibility aiding device, the MyEye 2’s interface is incredibly intuitive. It works just by pointing at text, objects, and people and can even recognize voice commands… besides, if you’re visually impaired, skip the pointing and just press the button on the device and it analyzes everything within its frame. The MyEye 2 comes with a universal design that easily straps onto any pair of glasses, thanks to a magnetic band. This means it can easily be taken off whenever not in use, and even while worn, the fact that it weighs just 22 grams makes it easy enough to wear every day without worrying about the weight.

Designer: OrCam

EyeRing finger-mounted connected cam captures signs and dollar bills, identifies them with OCR (hands-on)

Posted on 25/04/2012 by Zach Honig

Ready to swap that diamond for a finger-mounted camera with a built-in trigger and Bluetooth connectivity? If it could help identify otherwise indistinguishable objects, you might just consider it. The MIT Media Lab's EyeRing project was designed with an assistive focus in mind, helping visually disabled persons read signs or identify currency, for example, while also serving to assist children during the tedious process of learning to read. Instead of hunting for a grownup to translate text into speech, a young student could direct EyeRing at words on a page, hit the shutter release, and receive a verbal response from a Bluetooth-connected device, such as a smartphone or tablet. EyeRing could be useful for other individuals as well, serving as an ever-ready imaging device that enables you to capture pictures or documents with ease, transmitting them automatically to a smartphone, then on to a media sharing site or a server.

We peeked at EyeRing during our visit to the MIT Media Lab this week, and while the device is buggy at best in its current state, we can definitely see how it could fit into the lives of people unable to read posted signs, text on a page or the monetary value of a currency note. We had an opportunity to see several iterations of the device, which has come quite a long way in recent months, as you'll notice in the gallery below. The demo, which like many at the Lab includes a Samsung Epic 4G, transmits images from the ring to the smartphone, where text is highlighted and read aloud using a custom app. Snapping the text "ring," it took a dozen or so attempts before the rig correctly read the word aloud, but considering that we've seen much more accurate OCR implementations, it's reasonable to expect a more advanced version of the software to make its way out once the hardware is a bit more polished -- at this stage, EyeRing is more about the device itself, which had some issues of its own maintaining a link to the phone. You can get a feel for how the whole package works in the video after the break, which required quite a few takes before we were able to capture an accurate reading.

Gallery: MIT Media Lab: EyeRing