Oogle: RFID Shopping Assistant for the Visually Impaired
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Presentation Transcript
Oogle Shopping assistant for the vision impaired Andrew EbaughSaurav Chatterjee
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.
Why is Oogle needed? 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
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 Arriving at the store Enabling sensor glove 1 2 Transmitting ID signal to glove Selecting items 3 4
User Scenario, cont. Listening to audio response at cash register Putting away the groceries at home 5 6
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?