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History of rehabilitation engineering
Published in Alex Mihailidis, Roger Smith, Rehabilitation Engineering, 2023
Gerald Weisman, Gerry Dickerson
Braille's system of writing required a slate and stylus to punch holes in the paper in order to raise the dots. The writer punches each dot one at a time. Needless to say, this process was slow and inefficient. The first successful mechanical Braille writer was invented by Frank H. Hall, the superintendent of the Illinois Institution for the Education of the Blind (see Figure 1.10). From a Brief History of the Illinois Institution for the Education of the Blind 1849–1893:Under the direction of the Superintendent, a machine for writing Braille has been constructed by which a pupil can write many times as fast as he could write with a “stylus and tablet,” with the further advantage of having what he has written in a convenient position to be read. With these machines, the pupils solve their problems in algebra and write their letters and school exercises.(Antiquetypewriters 2018)
Robotic Technology and Artificial Intelligence in Rehabilitation Medicine
Published in Lawrence S. Chan, William C. Tang, Engineering-Medicine, 2019
Throughout history, many inventions and innovations in the medical field have been inspired by the need to improve or replace an existing body part that has a deficient or a lost function due to different conditions. Alexander Graham Bell’s mother lost her hearing when he was twelve years old. This tragic event encouraged Bell to become interested in acoustics, and later led to the development of telegraph and telephone (BELL 2018). During the two World Wars, many soldiers lost their limbs. As a consequence, prosthetic technologies have made significant strides, therefore benefited people with traumatic and non-traumatic amputations. Louis Braille became completely blind by age five due to a childhood accident. He worked diligently to develop a code, dots and dashes impressed into thick paper, for the French alphabet for night writing and later musical notations. Eventually in 1837, he invented the first small binary writing and reading system, called Braille, which blind people still use today (LOUIS BRAILLE 2018).
Tactile Communication in the Home Environment
Published in Philip D. Bust, Contemporary Ergonomics 2006, 2020
Elizabeth Ball, Colette Nicolle
Braille is a form of tactile writing. Refreshable Braille displays enable deafblind people to access computers. Thus Braille can be used for distance communication, such as email or text-telephony. It can also be used for face-to-face communication if the speaker, or a language support professional, types onto a computer keyboard and the deafblind person reads from a refreshable Braille display – a form of speech-to- Braille reporting. Potentially, Braille could be used with automatic speech recognition.
An interactive math braille learning application to assist blind students in Bangladesh
Published in Assistive Technology, 2022
Lutfun Nahar, Riza Sulaiman, Azizah Jaafar
Before describing the problem in this project, it is necessary to clarify few background information regarding mathematics for blind people. Braille is the most accepted method that is invented for the blind students to read and write in their academia (Braille, 1829). Louis Braille invented braille and introduced the idea of raised-dot system to a cell of 3 × 2 binary matrix, as in Figure 1a. This matrix can represent 64 (26 = 64) different characters (Schweikhardt, Bernareggi, Jessel, Encelle, & Gut, 2006; Southern, Clawson, Frey, Abowd, & Romero, 2012). Braille characters represent numbers, symbols, and distinct alphabetical characters. Sixty-four distinct combinations are perfectly adequate to represent literary texts (essentially made up of 26 letters, 10 digits and a small number of punctuation symbols). However, science and mathematics require many symbols, thus only 64 combinations are not enough to represent all the symbols. The conventional braille code for mathematics has some limitations; for example, some of the notations have very complex combination of braille cells. To make the things easier Nemeth code is introduced later, which provides easy combinations of braille dots for all the mathematics and science notations.
Advanced mathematics communication beyond modality of sight
Published in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 2018
Braille is well-known tactile writing system designed for blind and visually impaired individuals. This method of writing is commonly used in Canada up to grade 12, but not very often afterward. One of the significant shortfalls for Braille, limiting its adaptation for mathematics courses, is that it involves strictly linear notation and is not generally useful for mathematics and its various notations [11]. Besides, Braille readers can only perceive what is under their fingers at the time, so it can be tough for them to obtain a general and holistic view of algebraic expressions and graphs as a whole. The Braille extension specialized for mathematical notation is known as the Nemeth Code and has a different coding system than Braille does, but it is still linear in nature (see Figure 1). In this study, neither the instructor, the teaching assistant nor the tutor knew how to write and read the Braille codes. Considering Braille and Nemeth Code's limitations, we chose LaTex to translate mathematical language and formulas and prepare other written and printed materials for Anthony. LaTex is used to prepare textbook content, class and lecture notes and then all the files were shared through DropBox amongst different parties.
Recent advances in neuromorphic transistors for artificial perception applications
Published in Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, 2023
Generally, artificial perception system need information-receiving unit (that is, the sensory unit) that can obtain real-time information from external environment and information processing unit that can deal with information efficiently. However, information sensed by sensors can be easily obtained illegally during transmission in artificial perception system. Therefore, it is of great interests that information encryption strategy can be developed to ensure the security of information transmission. Shi et al. [107] proposed a flexible tactile perception platform for information encoding and encryption applications, as shown in Figure 13(a). To encrypt the tactile perceptual signals, an XNOR logic circuit was adopted. Thus, information transmitted in the whole perception platform is the encrypted information, avoiding the illegal acquisition of tactile signals. At the same time, the signals can also be decrypted with XNOR logic circuits. Braille is a special text designed for the blind and can be recognized by tactile perception. Each Braille code consists of three rows of patterns. Each row of pattern contains two dots (convex dot or flat dot). Thus, different letters can be represented by the combination of convex dots, as schematically shown in Figure 13(b). Chai et al. [105] also adopted high-sensitive flexible tactile perceptual interactive platform by integrating PDMS-based flexible tactile sensors and a flexible chitosan-gated oxide neuromorphic transistor. The flexible tactile perceptual platform also demonstrate high sensitivity. When loading a low pressure of ~1.4 Pa, the flexible tactile perceptual platform demonstrates high S/N value and sensitivity of ~4.93 and ~6.9 dB, respectively. They demonstrate Braille code recognition functions by integrating two tactile sensors, as schematically shown in Figure 13(c). Tactile sensor 1 and tactile sensor 2 were deemed as fingers that could recognize Braille codes. When the finger touched the convex dot, an EPSC current will be triggered, that is, ‘1’ state. When the finger has touched the flat dot, no EPSC current will be triggered, that is, ‘0’ state. Thus, four states can be defined, including ‘00’, ‘01’, ‘10’ and ‘11’, as shown in Figure 13(d). Therefore, the Braille code can be recognized line by line.