The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ambrane India Private Limited for mass manufacturing and sales of the “haptic smart watch for blind and visually impaired”. Under the MoU, the technology transfer of the haptic smart watch will take place.
The haptic smart watch has been developed by Siddhartha Panda and Vishwaraj Srivastava from the National Centre for Flexible Electronics at IIT Kanpur.
According to the release, the watches are available for blind and the visually impaired people and can be broadly classified into tactile, talking, vibration, and braille-based.
“The development of the haptic smart watch for the visually impaired and the blind is a revolutionary innovation from the team of 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,” Abhay Karandikar, director, IIT Kanpur, said.
Furthermore, the release mentioned that the haptic watch has 12 touch sensitive hour markers arranged over the dial face. The user is required to scan the markers with his/her fingers. For instance, to check the time of 3:40, the 3rd and 8th marker in the watch will be termed as the active markers. The vibration pulse will get generated on touching the active markers. A long pulse on three will indicate hours and a short pulse on eight will indicate minutes for checking the time of 3:40, the release added.