Executive Summary
Executive Summary of an Innovative Product
The business idea is to create sunglasses specifically for blind people. The sunglasses will be “smart” in the sense that they will have features which make it possible for blind people to do certain important things in their day-to-day lives. For instance, the sunglasses will have some types of alerts such as sounds, mini sonar sensor, and vibration objects to inform the users about obstacles around them. This is faster and more intuitive than voice. Voice is too slow and will add delays to reaction time. As the person walks vibrations with different frequency and intensity are sent to the skin.
The project also seeks to ensure that the vision devices would enable the user to identify traffic light signals, locate people, vehicles, and object movement when crossing a road. The sunglasses will also enable the user to identify and recognize objects such as currency notes, alphabets, numbers, among others. Furthermore, the users will enjoy the services radio program, and music media. In this creative idea, the sunglasses will have, in addition to the features above, a GPS locator with a voice system to tell the user where he/she is.
Most blind people would like to know where they are at any particular moment in time. This would help them to be contacted and reached whenever the need arises. For instance, if a blind person is in distress and needs help, he/she would prompt the GPS device in the sunglasses to tell him/her the current location. He/she will then convey this information to the authority who will come for their rescue. While sunglasses with most of the features above are already in the market, this project will specifically seek to bank on the fact that no other sunglass producer has a GPS with a voice system as a feature. This is what will particularly give us a competitive advantage for our new product.
Configuration buttons (with Braille touch) are located on the sides of the glasses. An operation and a training Braille manual are included.
The glasses will have 3 fields of sonar vision: top front and bottom, with the same angle as a normal field of vision. The top and front fields are represented by a top row of vibrators around the forehead, and second row just below the first representing the front field. A third row below the eyes by the chick bones represents the bottom field of vision. As the user walks with the head straight with the nose pointing forward and no objects are nearby the sensors are then mostly quite. As the user approaches a wall, all 3 rows vibrate at the same frequency and intensity. Intensity is increased as the user gets closer to the wall. As the user approaches a step up the bottom row vibrates the middle row may vibrate with a low frequency and intensity or not at all. In the case of a step down some vibrators on the bottom row vibrate with a distinctive combination while others on the bottom row vibrate with a different combination of frequency and intensity.