(PhThe Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur has entered into a technology transfer agreement with Ambrane India Private Limited for mass manufacturing and sale of the “haptic smart watch for blind and visually impaired” people.
The watch has been developed by Prof Siddhartha Panda and Vishwaraj Srivastava from the National Centre for Flexible Electronics at IIT, Kanpur. The technology licensing agreement was formally signed between IIT Kanpur and Ambrane India Pvt Ltd here on Thursday.
Prof Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur, said here in a statement on Friday that the development of the haptic smart watch for the visually impaired and the blind is a revolutionary innovation from the team of Prof Siddhartha Panda and Vishwaraj Srivastava at NCFlexE, IIT Kanpur.
“We believe that this watch will make a great social impact by enabling the visually impaired and blind to make seamless use of this technology for everyday usage. The watch will soon be commercialized by Ambrane India and will be available in the market at an affordable price,” he said.
This watch is a fusion of tactile and vibration watches. The complexity of a vibration watch generating more than 20 pulses has been reduced to 2 pulses, and the fragile nature of a tactile watch is eliminated, thus resulting in a simple-to-use, private, affordable, and robust watch.
The use of innovative haptic icons makes it easy to navigate the menu and a simple gesture like the double-tap can open a particular health monitoring app. These numbers are communicated in a similar way as the time.
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