Projects

Projects

Black and white image of Golden Gate Bridge in fog. Text: Be descriptive, be brief, be part of the solution.

Inactive

Describeathon 2019 Announced!

Join Describeathon 2019! Help make YouTube videos more accessible to blind viewers by adding your voice to this day of description. Use YouDescribe, our free web-based description tool, to describe the visuals of your favorite YouTube videos and have fun doing it!
Hands with pen on street map closeup

Completed

Audio/Tactile BART Station Maps

This collaborative project between Smith-Kettlewell and the San Francisco LightHouse applies Smartpen-Based audio/tactile graphics tools to improve orientation and wayfinding by travelers with visual disabilities in and around unfamiliar transit stations.
overTHERE icon: Globe image with pointing finger

Inactive

overTHERE

overTHERE is a virtual Talking Signs iPhone app for blind and visually-impaired pedestrians that demonstrates a powerful audio/haptic interface to location information about businesses and other points of interest.
Sample indoor sign showing automatic detection in yellow

Completed

Sign Finder

This project seeks to develop a computer vision-based system that allows a visually impaired traveler to find and read informational signs, such as signs labeling office doors, streets, restrooms and Exit signs.

Link open source code

Completed

Tutorials and Reference

These are tutorials and reference materials I have written on various topics in probability and geometry over the years.

map pose and exit detection image

Active

A Computer Vision-Based Indoor Wayfinding Tool

The ability to navigate safely and confidently is a fundamental requirement for independent travel and access to many settings such as work, school, shopping, transit and healthcare. Navigation is particularly challenging for people with visual impairments, who have limited ability to see signs, landmarks or maps posted in the environment.

Active

The Role of Selective Visual Attention in Amblyopic Suppression

Individuals with strabismus are confronted with double vision, their brain has to choose to attend to one image and ignore or suppress the other. It has been commonly suggested that a constant suppression on the non-preferred eye in strabismus is responsible for the development of amblyopia. In the current project, we study the role of top-influences of attention in amblyopic suppression and test the hypothesis that visual suppression in amblyopia may be a form of long-term attentional “neglect”.

researchers looking at a computer monitor

Completed

Alleviating interocular suppression by high-attention demand training in amblyopia

The goal of this project is to test a hypothesis that whether or not training patients to pay more attention to the input from the amblyopic eye can overcome interocular suppression to treat amblyopia.

Fellow Eye Deficits in Strabismic Amblyopia

Completed

Fellow Eye Deficits in Strabismic Amblyopia

Fellow eye abnormalities have been reported in a number of psychophysical and VEP studies. The goal of this project is to characterize the fellow eye deficits.

image of item at hou lab

Active

Grouping and Perception in Different Types of Amblyopia

This project was to measure the neural correlates of grouping and perception in different types of amblyopia. We found that strabismus generates significant abnormalities at both early and later stages of cortical processing and, importantly, that these abnormalities are independent of visual-acuity deficits