A wearable device for blind people to restore color perception

Abstract

39 million people in the world are blind. A good number of devices have been created or are under development, to let people suffering from blindness regain their sight, or at least the capability to recognize objects or to orient autonomously in space. Some devices were already developed to communicate the colors of the world to the user. We believe that, despite the physiological effects of colored lights are controversial, the re-visualization of colors could represent a major improvement for blind people, with beneficial effects on mood or manic-depressive states. The aim of this paper is to present a portable device acted to sense colors and to return them as a tactile stimulus to the user, following the haptics paradigm. The device was tested on 30 people (15 men, 15 women) with various age. The device was tested on primary colors (Red, Green, and Blue) and mixed colors with isoluminance. The results obtained are promising, with an overall accuracy in the detection of primary colors of 96.67% and mixed colors with 86.67%.