GUIBE

Overview

As my main second-year project I developed a wearable device that uses haptics to guide a visually impaired user through a city environment. It was a group project — I took the CTO role, responsible for the electronics back-end, circuit design, and the iOS app that interfaced with the bracelet.

Research

For three months we researched and conducted interviews. We discovered that the most dangerous part of a user’s day was the journey itself — particularly when navigating alone. To address this we eliminated voice instructions entirely and used discreet haptics to send turn-by-turn directions to the user’s wrist.

The build

The bracelet interfaced with an iPhone app — we chose Apple because it offers far more accessibility features than any other platform, and the visually impaired market predominantly uses Apple products. To bypass the need for MFi certification, I designed a custom circuit that amplifies analogue sound signals, then connected a small Bluetooth receiver to the phone just like a pair of headphones.