The vOICe for Android

See with your ears! The vOICe for Android maps live camera views to soundscapes, offering augmented reality for the totally blind through sensory substitution and computer vision. Also includes a talking color identifier, talking compass, talking face detector and a talking GPS locator, while the ZXing barcode scanner and Google Goggles can be launched from The vOICe for Android by tapping the left or right screen edge.

Is it an augmented reality game or a serious tool? It can be both, depending on what you want it to be! The ultimate goal is to provide a form of synthetic vision to the blind, but sighted users can simply have fun playing the game of sight-without-eyesight. You can also help us by blogging about how *you* learn to see with sound. We hope that the highly anticipated Google Project Glass devices will prove compatible with The vOICe for Android, using the tiny camera in these glasses to generate a live sonic augmented reality overlay, hands-free!

How does it work? The vOICe uses pitch for height and loudness for brightness in one-second left to right scans of any view: a rising bright line sounds as a rising tone, a bright spot as a beep, a bright filled rectangle as a noise burst, a vertical grid as a rhythm. Best used with stereo headphones for the most immersive experience and most detailed auditory resolution.

Just experiment with simple visual patterns first, because real-life imagery is complex. Randomly drop a bright item such as a DUPLO brick on a dark table top, and learn to reach for it through sound alone (closing your eyes if you have eyesight). Next try and explore your own safe home environment, learning to associate the complex sound patterns with what you already know is there.

For serious users: learning to see with sound is like learning a foreign language or learning to play a musical instrument, really challenging your perseverance and brain plasticity. It may well be the ultimate brain training system, bridging the senses through artificial synesthesia.

Why is it free? Because our foremost goal is to make a real change by lowering barriers to use as much as we can. You will find that competing technologies cost upwards of $15,000 and yet have lower specs. The perceptual resolution offered by The vOICe is unmatched even by $100,000 "bionic eye" retinal implants (PLoS ONE 7(3): e33136).

Please report bugs to feedback@seeingwithsound.com, and visit the web page seeingwithsound.com/android.htm for detailed description and disclaimers.

Thank you!

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