BEIJING, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom have developed a robotic sensor that, combined with artificial intelligence technology, can read braille at nearly twice the speed of a human reader. The robot was not originally developed as an assistive technology for the blind, but its high sensitivity makes it an ideal model for developing robotic hands or prosthetics. Its sensitivity is even comparable to that of a human fingertip. The findings were published in a new issue of the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
Human fingertips are very sensitive and help people gather information about the world around them. Fingertips can detect small changes in the texture of a material or help people know how much force they need to use to grip an object. For example, picking up an egg without breaking it, or picking up a bowling ball without dropping it, these simple behaviors are very difficult for robots.
Braille is an ideal test object for the robot's "fingertip". This is because reading braille requires high sensitivity, with the dots in each representative letter pattern being very close together. Using off-the-shelf sensors, researchers have developed a robotic braille reader that more accurately replicates human reading behavior.
Existing robotic braille readers can only read one letter at a time, but that's not the way humans read. The robot sensor developed this time has a camera on the "fingertip", and the information of the camera and the sensor can be read accurately and quickly.
The team developed machine learning algorithms so that the robot reader could "deblur" the image before the sensor tried to recognize the letters. They trained the algorithm on a set of clear braille images with false blurry applied. After the algorithm learned to deblur the letters, they used a computer vision model to detect and classify each character.
Once the algorithms were merged, the researchers quickly swiped the reader along a row of braille characters to test it. The robotic braille reader can read at a speed of 315 words per minute with an accuracy of 87%, which is twice as fast as human braille reading and has similar accuracy.
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Braille is a special reading and writing system that is entirely based on the sense of touch. Blind people who are new to Braille need to touch and recognize with their fingertips, and cannot skip words or serialize. It tests memory, tactile sensitivity, and even patience. However, the robots described in this article have not only "fingertips" but also "eyes". Combined with the information from the camera and the sensor, it can achieve accurate and fast reading of Braille; Using algorithms, machines can also read obfuscated braille. This application can be used to develop better braille readers. Of course, a sensitive robot that can do a lot more can do even more in a small bump.
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