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I published a blog post about smart canes. Read the post, but here's a summary in thread form to peak your curiosity. https://derekriemer.com/posts/2021/01/16/some-thoughts-on-smart-canes/
over the last few years, many attempts have been made at creating a smart cane. None of them have successfully lead to a market transforming technology... most of them are inspiration porn.
I saw a recent example of a smart cane getting news coverage, and it deserves particular attention because of a particularly egregious argument used within. ...
“We’ve come to a world where we talk about autonomous vehicles and yet we’re still sending visually impaired people out with what is essentially a stick,” ... “It doesn’t take you anywhere. It doesn’t take you to a coffee shop."..."It’s just a stick.”
There are literally thousands of examples of objects that are "just a stick", or in similar fashion, just a piece of metal, or similarly primitive.
the blind persons cane has lasted for a century in its current form, and thousands of years prior actually with slightly less refined designs, because it works. It's that simple.
The original engineers who decided to improve upon a stick to come up with a cane optimized the design so well that further refinements were relegated to small updates to the existing design as new materials became available.
A radically different cane or guiding implement has never materialized, because there aren't any problems that need solved in regards to finding objects nearby, besides objects above nee height.
After discussing the subtle design elements that go into a cane, I state the following.
a cane is more than just a stick, its a stick with many subtle refinements that have been made, without changing the basic technology.
The engineering refinements that have been made over the decades are so well done that the average user, ..., won't even realize serious effort was placed into ensuring some set of constraints was optimized.
After explaining the things a smart cane has to be able to do before even being considered for purchase by me, I conclude that the technology doesn't really need to exist.
Overall, I'm not particularly interested in seeing a smart cane come into existence, because it just sounds expensive and like a less than ideal weight addition.
It seems like people are trying to modify a kitchen knife to heat food instead of creating an oven, and then generating media buzz about their new super cool knife that can also toast your bread.
If this sounds interesting, read the entire post at https://derekriemer.com/posts/2021/01/16/some-thoughts-on-smart-canes/
