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Francesca Cain’s Status Report for September 27th

This week, I spent much of my time reflecting upon our presentation from last week, and considering the suggestions for improvement provided to our group by our instructor a TA. Notably, we need to spend time creating a mitigation plan, which we didn’t include last week. We had a meeting with our instructor and TA who provided us with helpful feedback in determining our finalized plan for our project prior to our upcoming design presentation.

I researched materials, their sourcing, and their costs for our project, as well as similar products on the market. In terms of a braille label maker, the closest I was able to find is the LoganTech 6Dot Braille Label Maker, which uses a six key input rather than OCR scanning to determine the text.  It is also very expensive (over $1k+) and inaccessible to most average patients. We found it helpful to see it’s embossing mechanism and tape used to print, though, and we are considering buying its refill tape pack for our own project.

I researched types of Raspberry Pis, and the Raspberry Pi AI HAT, which our TA had suggested we may want to use to help with speed. If we end up having the funds to implement this AI HAT, we may purchase it, but we determined that for now, it’s a non-priority.  As for the Raspberry Pi, we hope to use this as our main microprocessor, and we were able to secure one from the 18-500 Inventory list, which we will pick up on Monday or Tuesday of next week. We still need to purchase a camera– I do not think that ECE has the type of camera we need. I researched the Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera (IMX477R), Raspberry Pi AI Camera with Sony IMX500 (which has an onboard AI vision sensor), and the Module 3 Sensor Assembly (which is said to be goof for external hardware, like we are using). Next week, I should decide which of these to choose so we can order it.

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Team Status Report for September 27th

This week, our team worked through our plan for what materials we were going to order and ones we could borrow. We looked into the Raspberry Pi AI HAT add-on to improve speed in our OCR processing, but decided we could move forward with regular Raspberry Pi for now and circle back if needed. For the embosser, we worked through two different ideas. The first is to take an existing handheld Braille embosser and use it as a base. Onto the base, we would add motors to make it automated. However, this comes at a time cost and after the TA meeting, we decided to move this to a back-up option. The plan we are moving forward with is a embosser we make. This will include three pins that emboss half a Braille character and a system for moving the label tape forward.

In addition to this planning, we worked through our design presentation. We will take the notes from our proposal presentation and apply them to the new presentation. We will additionally focus more on our mitigation plan.

Part A, written by Francesca Cain:

With respect to public health, safety or welfare, our project aims to improve the lived experience of the blind and visually impaired community. Most clearly in terms of safety, the ability to easily and quickly scan a flat label to create a braille label has applications in pharmaceutical safety. If a blind patient is unable to clearly see a medication label, and with many prescription bottles being the same standardized shape and size, this increases the likelihood of mistaking or potentially overdosing on a prescription medication. This can be life threatening. In terms of general welfare, this product improves living independency for those who are visually impaired, reducing need for a sighted partner or aid for assistance.

Part B, written by Abigail Gredell:

This project addresses a social gap of a lack of braille translation tools. Most devices require the help of a sighted person, and this device aims to provide independence to the user along with the base functionality. It supports greater inclusion in the house, at work, and in other communal spaces. It in general brings awareness of accessibility needs and helps people work thorugh social barriers.

Part C, written by Bella Woodard:

Our device addresses economic factors by making braille printing and labeling more accessible and affordable. Current commercial braille embossers are often prohibitively expensive, bulky, and limited to institutional use. This places a financial barrier on individuals in the blind and visually impaired community. Our design aim is to reduce production costs and provide a scalable solution that could be distributed at a fraction of the cost of existing embossers.

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Bella Woodard’s Status Report for September 20th

This week I completed the project proposal slides and created the Gantt chart outlining our project timeline. Preparing these deliverables included collaborating with teammates, researching references, formatting the slides, and breaking down the project milestones into specific tasks and deadlines.

Project Proposal: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WXwwa34O-rMQ0qtkz5L0SH64WpbvtYx2qES9lCsy7rg/edit?usp=sharing

Gant Chart: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xA4N9NPSlEUf5CPvli5-VonDIgC-3FK7PKDLm38_j1A/edit?usp=sharing

Our progress is on schedule, although there is still a significant amount of research to be done before we can begin the design process. Completing the proposal and Gantt chart has provided structure for the project, but additional background work will be necessary to ensure the design phase goes smoothly.

Next week, we hope to reach out to the campus Office of Disability Resources and the Western Pennsylvania School for Blind Children to conduct further research. In addition, we plan to complete our design presentation, incorporating insights gained from these discussions.

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Abby’s Status Report for Sep 20

This week, I helped work on the slides and document for our proposal presentation. We additionally worked through some of the questions the TA’s had about our project. I found some example embossers on Amazon, we are thinking we can either directly automate one of these devices or use it was a model. During our second meeting with the TA’s, we brought up a size we should aim for and them encouraged us to stick with the handheld design as that is what adds the most uniqueness to our project. I additionally found more inspiration about how we are going to go about making the embosser, as we’ve seen buying one will be outside of our budget and not fall in the handheld category.

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Francesca Cain’s Status Report for September 20th

This week, I spent the majority of my time preparing for our final project presentation. After Bella completed the slides, I focused on practicing how to deliver information about our project in a way that would be digestible for people unfamiliar with our project, with OCR, or even with ECE in general. I also spent considerable time preparing for our project proposal presentation and anticipating questions that our classmates might ask.

We were asked many helpful questions by our classmates and TAs. One that stuck with me, and our group in general, was about the automation of testing for our OCR text recognition to braille process. Given the scope and number of texts we hope to test, we realized we need to spend more time determining how to create easy, repeatable, and modular testing for various aspects of our project.

After my in-class presentation that day, I spent time researching ways to automate this testing. I believe there are some viable options involving machine learning that I am excited to explore further next week.

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Team Status Report for September 20th

This week, our group spent the majority of our time preparing for our final project presentation. Bella prepared our slides and the corresponding Gantt chart, and Francesca spent considerable time preparing for our project proposal presentation and anticipating questions that our classmates might ask.

In hearing these questions, one issue that arose was the automation of testing for our OCR text recognition to braille process. This led us to think critically about modularization across the various components our project relies upon.

Following our Gantt chart, we have been researching available OCR libraries, the actuation method we plan to use, and the cameras and microcontrollers (like Raspberry Pi) we might use. Though our Gantt chart specifies that we should order these tools this week, through research and discussion with other students, we are considering borrowing a camera and repurposing a Raspberry Pi from a prior class. This would reduce waste and help us maximize our $600 budget.

Next week, and further following our Gantt chart, we hope to finalize our tool selection and move on to selecting materials for printing our labels.