Granite Geek: Augmented reality app aids sight-impaired at Manchester airport
Stephanie Hurd, community relations coordinator for Future In Sight, a statewide nonprofit for the visually impaired. She was demonstrating a service called Aira that has just started at Manchester airport. The company has geo-tagged the airport so that anybody can turn on Aira there for free without using up data minutes.
Wearing glasses with an installed wide-angle-lens camera – think Google Glass as designed by Clark Kent – Hurd walked confidently through the ambulatory chaos of an airport lobby despite being blind and alone.
“The sign is about 20 to 30 feet in front of you,” said a voice from the smartphone connected to the glasses, directing her toward the displays of departures and arrivals. A moment later, Hurd was pointing her face in the direction she was told so the person at the other end of the connection could snap a photo of the display and tell her such vital information as which gate her flight was leaving from and whether it was on time.
“There’s a flight to Atlanta, on time,” the voice told her.
Aira is a professional version of a service that exists in free, peer-to-peer form, but which sighted people like me didn’t even know about. The idea is pretty simple: make a Skype-like connection with somebody over your smartphone so they can look through the camera and act as your eyes, telling you what they see. There are also versions using what is loosely called artificial intelligence to give advice, but people are still much better at this task.
Manchester is one of scores of airports that has turned on Aira, which costs it about $5,000 a year to cover cellphone minutes, said Director Ted Kitchens.
See the full story here: https://www.concordmonitor.com/airport-manchester-audio-aira-blind-26576052