Michelle Thomas is learning to "see", not with her eyes but her ears. Now she can also use a mobile camera phone to do it. Blind since birth, Ms Thomas is able to recognize the walls and doors of her house, discern whether the lights are on or off and even distinguish a CD from a floppy disk after only a week using a revolutionary new system. She is "seeing with sound" reports the BBC.
A computer reconstruction of one second of sound as seen by the vOICe system Developed by Dr Peter Meijer, a senior scientist at Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands, the system is called The vOICe (the three middle letters standing for "Oh I See"). It works by translating images from a camera on-the-fly into highly complex soundscapes, which are then transmitted to the user over headphones. Watch the 'spikes' A wearable setup consists of a head-mounted camera, stereo headphones and a notebook PC. In total it costs about $2,500. The software is available as a free download.
This headset connects to a mobile PC More about the product here read full BBC article
