Work in progress - description of a service learning project to design assistive technologies to aid the visually-impaired in India

Author

Slowik, Raymond ; Krishnan, Mohan ; Venugopal, Prasad ; Yost, Sandra A. ; Das, Shuvra

Author_Institution

Univ. of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, MI, USA

fYear

2009

fDate

18-21 Oct. 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

Cultural practices in India that dictate that individuals remove their footwear before entering homes and places of worship creates a challenge for visually-impaired people in identifying and collecting their footwear as they leave. This paper describes an interdisciplinary service-learning project, involving students in Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and the Mechanical Engineering (ME) programs, whose goal is to design and develop assistive technologies to help ameliorate this situation. The paper outlines the relevant technological issues in this project, and discusses how this research might be incorporated into the existing pedagogical structure of both programs.

Keywords

education; handicapped aids; Electrical and Computer Engineering program; Mechanical Engineering program; assistive technologies; service learning project; visually-impaired people; Coils; Costs; Cultural differences; Design engineering; Footwear; Innovation management; Prototypes; RF signals; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency identification; Assistive technologies; interdisciplinary project; service learning; social entrepreneurship;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frontiers in Education Conference, 2009. FIE '09. 39th IEEE

Conference_Location

San Antonio, TX

ISSN

0190-5848

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4715-2

Electronic_ISBN

0190-5848

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FIE.2009.5350518

Filename

5350518