EyeMusic Can Help The Blind To See

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL. The EyeMusic is a device that has been recently developed and its developers claim that it may help the blind to “see”. It is one of the newest mobile technology breakthroughs in the market that has been made to make up for the absence of vision for the blind. Through sound, they will be able to “see” different colors and shapes.

The device is composed of a stand-alone pair of glasses with a webcam and headset attached to it. It works by real-time digital camerawork and pre-set soundscapes where shapes, colors and other visual properties are converted to sound. That way, the users get the sense of the environment around them through the sense of hearing. The webcam and the headset are working together to give the user a realistic feel on how the surroundings is like. Each color corresponds to a different atmosphere that sets the mood to make it a pleasant experience.

Professor Amir Amedi is the one who led the research team for the EyeMusic project at Israel’s Hebrew University. The technology uses five different instruments to represent different moods at a time. The color white is represented by vocals, blue by trumpet, red with reggae organ, green with synthesized reed, yellow for violin and Black is represented by silence. With these different instruments, the user will pretty much have a good idea on how the environment around them actually looks like.

So far, the EyeMusic has been dubbed by the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience as the most accurate of its kind. They have confirmed that the level of accuracy of the EyeMusic is able to prove that performing daily tasks is already feasible enough with it. That also indicates that the EyeMusic has a potential for rehabilitative use. This breakthrough technology will surely be able to help a lot of visually impaired people to once again regain functionality.