IcanC

This project aims to allow the blind to benefit from a satisfactory substitution of natural sight. In the 1960s Pr. Bach-y-Rita developed a tactile vision sensory substitution device for the blind (TVSS). The principle of TVSS was to convert a video image into a vibratory or electric image, on the skin of blind subjects. The sensory substitution raised great hopes then, but disappointed the users with the use, more precisely when the filmed object lost stability. IcanC is correcting the main defect of existing devices. The principal innovation of IcanC is to control the image received by the skin in real time by the movements of the eyes. This feedback will allow a progressive repair of the loss of oculomotor coordination and will create a sensorimotor action loop, analogous to that of normal sight (sight / gaze). The images received by the brain will therefore be those that the eyes would have seen, if they could do so. The project will include other improvements: • The device will be double, one per eye, to reproduce binocularity. • The stimulation on the skin will be done through a vibrating screen in high resolution, reproducing the images of the two visual fields. • We can superimpose other information (horizon, compass, GPS, routes, contextual information etc.) All in all, more data, more exact and more precise, for a full exploitation of the brain plasticity, towards a real visual substitution.