Ford working on smart window prototype for Blind passengers

MANILA: Ford has come up with a smart car window model that is capable of illustrating the outside view to blind passengers by using the vibrations. The technology was developed by the Italian division of Ford along with Aedo, a tech start-up. Basically, the window converts an image into vibrations of different intensities and this allows the blind person to feel the landscape.

There was a video released by Ford that describes its latest technology as “allowing passengers to touch the scene and rebuild in their mind the landscape in front of them".

In addition to that, the smart window will be accompanied by a voice assistant integrated with the car’s audio system and it will provide relevant information about the outside view.

Let us look at a technical summary of how the smart window works. The outer side of the smart window captures a picture of the view and converts it into a black and white image. Each and every grey shade of the image is then specified by a vibration of specific intensity and there are 255 of them in total.  Even though this is just a concept from Ford, the technology is most likely to be implemented soon and it will change the future of smart cars.

A Ford spokesman said,” We seek to make people’s lives better and this was a fantastic opportunity to help blind passengers experience a great aspect of driving. The technology is advanced, but the concept is simple – and could turn mundane journeys into truly memorable ones.”

Ford recently rolled out new efficient boosting measures for its business and the company is planning to invest in alternative technology for developing smart cars. Ford is looking at an investment of around $11.5 billion from its existing plans to invest in the development of new and alternative technologies. As a result, the Fiesta and other sedans line-up are being dropped by 2020.