RADAR STICK AIDS BLIND

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30979, 8 February 1966, Page 22

RADAR STICK AIDS BLIND

Development In U.S. (N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) PHILADELPHIA,. A walking stick, equipped with a form of radar to enable a blind person to tell the distance and direction of an object, has been developed by Dr. T. A. Benham, a physics Professor at Haverford College, who has been blind since the age of two. He worked with Mr D. Bolgiano and Mr J. M. Benjamin, jr., both engineers with Bionic Instruments, Inc., of suburban Bala-Cynwyd. Research workers say the new cane, with its electronic impulses, finds obstacles with great efficiency, and depends on the tapping of the cane, already a habit with the blind, to find step-down curbs. But is does locate deeper abrupt drops, such as stairways. The cane does these things through two camera-like bulges, one at the handle and the other about knee-height. This provides a distance of from 10in to 14in as the base of the triangle used to make' the distance computations. The distance-ranging is done by a technique familiar i to artillerymen—measuring! two angles of a triangle at! each end of a base line of known length.