Objective Drawing device for the blind people, with erase capability.The consortium is going to develop a drawing prototype system (using the Braille printer's method), that allows the printing and erasing of pseudo-graphics (using closer points than the standard Braille writing, and special paper), with an enhanced user interface communication composed of a digitising tablet, a speech synthesiser and a Braille Keyboard. The first users will be the students of the special schools for the blind. Technical Approach : The system will be based on a new material. This material allows printing as normal Braille printers do, and erasure with heat application. Our aim is to develop a drawing prototype system that can do Pseudo Graphics (using closer dots than Braille dots) & erase them. The system will have a digitising table (placed under the printed paper) as an Input Device, that will allow drawing on its surface, or to signal points of a drawn sheet (i.e. answers to questions about the draw). In order to increase the simplicity and flexibility of the user-system communications, the system will contain a speech synthesiser and a Braille Keyboard.The project includes the development of three applications for the system. Due to the open architecture of the planned system (that will allow flexible use of its communication devices), writing future applications to perform special tasks using its resources, will be very easy and will be based on a defined commands library. These applications will run from a Host Computer, or from an included RAM CARD slot.Impact and Expected Results : Nowadays, we can find an important number of products oriented for use by the blind that can increase their quality of life, but many of these high technology products are not oriented to the blind child at school. School children will be the first users for this product, which will be an enormous interactive aid to the teaching of geography, drawing, geometric etc., thanks to the special teaching oriented software applications that the ETRE project will include. On the other hand, thanks to its easy applications programmability, other markets will be opened in the future, by developing new applications oriented to other fields.The first aim of the project is to integrate all the existing technologies (printers, Braille Keyboards, Speech synthesisers etc.) to achieve the Drawing Prototype described, with minor changes to them.The Consortium will work mainly on the development of a Main Board to control the whole system, a Board to control all the User Interface (Speech synthesiser, Braille Keyboard & Digitising Tablet), the improvement of characteristics of the special paper, the mechanical design for the prototypes and the Software development.The outcomes of the project will be demonstrated on two functional prototypes, and three Software applications. A 'Draw & Print' application, a 'Interactive Teaching' application that will allow the teacher to control the systems from a host computer (thus controlling all the system resources to build self designed lessons), and a 'Real Image Printing' application that will allow conversion of real scanned images, extracting desired special features (grey scales, contours ...) to pseudo-graphics.We expect that our results will be very useful for the Special Schools for the Blind, opening up for them new teaching methods for a very wide age range of students. Programme(s) HS-TIDE 1 - Technology initiative (EEC) for disabled and elderly people (TIDE), 1993-1994 Topic(s) 1.4 - Computer environments and public terminals Call for proposal Data not available Funding Scheme CSC - Cost-sharing contracts Coordinator CIBERVEU,SA EU contribution No data Address C/Béjar, 36 08014 Barcelona Spain See on map Total cost No data Participants (5) Sort alphabetically Sort by EU Contribution Expand all Collapse all INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE (INSERM) France EU contribution No data Address 101 Rue de Tolbiac See on map Total cost No data MIW France EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data ONCE Spain EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data THIEL GmbH Germany EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data UPC Spain EU contribution No data Address See on map Total cost No data
