Arthur Agdeppa, Jr. was born and raised in the Philippines. He currently attends Maui Community College and is in the Electronics and Computer Engineering Technology program. He is currently working in Computing Services on campus as an intern and hopes that someday he will find a job in the field of technology on Maui.
Institution when accepted: Maui Community College
Akamai Project: Building a Prototype of the Tactile Vision Substituion System Using High Speed Video Camera
Project Site: Oceanit
Mentors: Curt Leonard, Leslie Bailey
Project Abstract:
The most common cause of blindness is the loss of photoreceptors, light-sensing cells, in the eye and there is no treatment available. In the absence of the photoreceptors in the eye, there is no image information sent to the brain. The Tactile Vision Substitution System (TVSS) is a Sensory Substitution System which is used to replace one human sense (eye) with another (skin) to send information to the brain. The device uses a regular camera, instead of a biological eye, to capture images and an array of microelectrodes to impress the edges of the image to the skin. The brain interprets those edges as images. The approach of this research project is to exploit the use of a high speed CMOS sensor and high performance logic to replicate, or better, the performance of the biological eye. The goal of this project is to design the program for a prototype to support the design theory. The first step was to analyze TVSS logic by reading documentations of the device. Next, hardware was defined for the prototype to ensure compatibility, then to develop generic software under Linux to control the hardware and to further process the image. The trial product will consist of a COHU-7200 high speed CMOS sensor connected to a Linux laptop Firewire interface. An LED array will be used as microelectrodes to prevent electrical injuries. The challenges are to learn and implement an edge detection algorithm and to create a formula that will scale down the image from the input to the output’s resolution. The Prototype will be used to test the potential of the TVSS device.