Ford building smart car window prototype for visually impaired commuters

• Published On: 7 May 2018
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The new vibration-based tech will showcase what cars are capable of in the future.

The company has created what its called its 'Feel The View' technology. The window uses vibrations to ‘illustrate’ the view to passengers who are visually impaired. The company’s Italian division worked in partnership with tech start-up Aedo to build this tech. What the tech does is convert a visual image into vibrations of varying intensities which makes it possible for a partially sighted person to feel the landscape this helps them get an idea of what the environment is like.

It takes a picture of the window and converts it into a black and white image with varying shades of grey. These shades of grey are then converted and represented as vibrations with different intensities – there are a total of 255 intensities in total. This tech is nascent and could feature in cars in the future.

“We seek to make people’s lives better and this was a fantastic opportunity to help blind passengers experience a great aspect of driving,” said a Ford spokesman. “The technology is advanced, but the concept is simple – and could turn mundane journeys into truly memorable ones.”