Braille is a method of physical writing used to allow humans to read by touch — most commonly used as a substitute for printed text by those who may be visually impaired. Both displaying Braille and reading it is difficult to do with machines, but there has been a development in the latter area. A research team has trained a robot to read Braille at a speed far exceeding humans.
The robot was developed by a team at the University of Cambridge. Rather than trying to read Braille by touch, it instead uses a camera and an image recognition algorithm to do the job. Their solution is a bit ironic in a way, given the purpose Braille was created for. The robot can quickly sweep across a Braille display, working at a rate of up to 315 words per minute at 87% accuracy. That’s roughly twice as fast as a human reading Braille, with a similar level of accuracy. Some nifty de-blurring algorithms were needed to achieve this speed from the camera’s video feed.
We’ve also seen some impressive development on the other side of all those little bumps, with two Braille devices taking home awards during the final Hackaday Prize in 2023.
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