Toyota Robotics BLAID experience prototype | Role: Interaction Design Director, Client Relationship Lead
The Toyota Robotics BLAID experiential prototype empowers visually impaired users to move more seamlessly and confidently through the world around them. With a range of cameras and other sensor types, users can avoid objects encountered when moving through spaces.
An Immersive Guidance Experience
The BLAID device uses numerous cameras, sensors, and haptic and acoustic technologies to help guide users through spaces. The system can recognize elements in a user's environment and teach them how to move around them appropriately. Four main modes of use, including exploring, scanning, capturing, and finding, were identified as desirable for those who are visually impaired.
Overview of BLAID product features
Blending In
Those with impaired abilities are keen to experience life as others do and don’t want to stand out. Many users say that if they can use devices that can compensate for any impairment they have, they hope the technology will be able to benefit all of us. Designed to be a discrete personal technology device, the BLAID blends in like a pair of common headphones.
Intuitive Interaction
Users press one of four tactilely differentiated areas of the BLAID device to interact with it. A quick tap of one of the four mode buttons instructs the device to scan and read key elements in a user’s surroundings, such as restroom signs. Navigational paths and waypoints can also be stored easily to aid users in finding their way through unfamiliar spaces.
Rough, Rapid, and Right Functional Prototype
The alpha prototype contained working components that allowed all aspects of the user experience to be simulated.
Appearance Model