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EW NEWS & OPINION 8 May 2015 by Maxine Lipner EyeWorld Senior Contributing Writer Echolocation offers new answer I magine being able to assist visually disabled patients to use their ears to seamlessly find their way around obstacles akin to a bat using echolocation to navigate its environment. Such is the promise of a new device dubbed "HELP," or the Human Echo Loca- tion Partner, which was recently de- veloped by students at Wake Forest University, according to William E. Conner, PhD, professor of biology at the university in Winston-Salem, N.C. Dr. Conner, who has a long- standing interest in bats and sonar, helped to steer a group of students in the university STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) course toward the idea of utilizing echolocation to assist blind individ- uals. "They needed a project, so I sug- gested that this might be a fruitful place to look," Dr. Conner said. Early on, he showed the team a video of a young man named Ben Underwood who, although visual- ly disabled, had learned to readily navigate around objects by clicking his tongue. "The first day with this group I showed a video of a human doing this and asked, 'Is there a way we can do this for people who aren't as gifted as Ben?'" Dr. Conner said. "I told them that there are schools on the West coast that teach this to young children—they have to get started very early, but they can learn to do this." For those that are able to learn the echolocation approach as chil- dren, their brains rewire to learn this new technique. "They use the visual cortex that they would normally use for sight for processing the sound," Dr. Conner explained. "They have all of this processing power that's not being used, so they use it for a different purpose." Acoustic flashlight The students, together with Paul Pauca, an associate professor of computer science from Wake Forest who was also interested in the proj- ect, got to work on developing the unique technology. "They ran with it and developed a device within about 2 weeks," Dr. Conner said. The HELP device consists of an ultrasound emitter and receiver. "It sends out a series of sound pulses and if an object is nearby, the sound pulses will bounce off and go to the receiver," Dr. Conner said. He added that once it is received, it goes to a smaller computer board that sends out a signal to the vibrator, turns it on, and tells it how strongly to vibrate. To make it easy to use, it was designed as a wristwatch that sends out high frequency clicks and listens for echoes, he noted. "It's a proximity tester, and if there's an object that it detects, it vibrates on the inner side of your wrist where you're quite sensitive to vibration," Dr. Conner said, add- ing that it is possible to scan your surroundings with this, looking for obstacles. "It's like having an acous- tic flashlight," Dr. Conner explained. "It has a beam and you can sweep it around and test your environment to see what's close and what's far away." With the device, the closer the object, the more intense the vibra- tion, he said. Testing in the fiel When the group had a visually im- paired Wake Forest student field-test the device, they found it translated well in the real world. "The way the student explained it is she normal- ly uses a seeing eye dog but there are places where she can't take her dog and situations that the dog has trouble with," Dr. Conner said. "For example, she explained that the dog will frequently take her to the entrance of a building but she can't tell if the door is open or not." So the team simulated that situation. "We took her to a building where there were double doors and she did a simple scan and said 'That door is closed and that one is open so I'm going to walk through here,'" Dr. Conner said. In addition, there are times when her dog sleeps or cannot physically go where she does. For ex- ample, this particular student rows crew and the dog cannot go in the boat, Dr. Conner noted. "Also, she thought it would be useful in her home when her dog is resting and not on duty." She was able to use the device from the start because of its ease-of- use, he said. "It's very simple—she Students 'HELP' the visually disabled picked up on it right away," Dr. Conner said. When sighted students were blindfolded and given the device, they were able to scan their way around an obstacle course with- out much difficult , he said. Dr. Conner said the device's resolution is quite good. "You can pick up a ruler and if you hold it vertically, it has no trouble detecting the ruler," he said. It is this ability to scan the environment for ob- jects that makes the HELP device so powerful. Going forward, the team plans to make a YouTube video of the de- vice being used. They are also going to make blueprints for the device so that others can build their own. "To put one together is going to cost less than $60," he said. Because the technology will be open-source, the hope is that people all over the world can ultimately make this de- vice even better, he concluded. EW Editors' note: Dr. Conner has no fina - cial interests related to his comments. Contact information Conner: Conner@wfu.edu To read more about the transi- tion, see the April issue of EyeWorld for Dr. Chang's final "Chief medical editor's corner of the world" col- umn, and page 20 of this month's edition for Dr. Donnenfeld's first column. EW Contact information Chang: dceye@earthlink.net Donnenfeld: ericdonnenfeld@gmail.com David F. Chang continued from page 3 In Dr. Chang's first editorial, "A Salute to two Steves" in the April 2011 issue of EyeWorld, he spoke about stepping into the role. "It is a tremendous honor for me to now have the opportunity to follow such an accomplished group of chief medical editors," he said. In that editorial, Dr. Chang also said he was truly excited to work with the new editorial team. "With so many different trade magazines competing for readers' attention, our goal is to continue to provide timely and balanced cover- age of the most clinically relevant subjects for our broad and diverse base of readers," Dr. Chang said in 2011. In his first "Chief medical editor's corner of the world," de- buting in this issue of EyeWorld, Dr. Donnenfeld said he is excited to take on the role as chief medical editor in the current innovative climate in ophthalmology, and honored to follow Dr. Chang as chief medical editor. "Under [Dr. Chang's] leadership, the publication has grown and ma- tured into the preeminent periodical in ophthalmology and a must-read for all of us who seek to incorporate in-depth, clinician-oriented, state-of- the-art information into our ever-ex- panding specialty," Dr. Donnenfeld said. Dr. Chang will now co-chair the ASCRS Foundation with Dr. Lane. " [The device] has a beam and you can sweep it around and test your environment to see what's close and what's far away. " – William E. Conner, PhD