Students come up with device to help blind locate crosswalk button

WORCESTER, Mass. — As Larry Raymond walked across City Hall plaza toward a busy street corner Tuesday, a transmitter attached to his guide dog's harness began beeping as he approached the crosswalk signal button.

Raymond, who is blind, veered to the right. The signal became softer.

He turned back toward the pole and after just a few misses his hand connected with the crosswalk signal button and he pressed it.

The light changed with a chirping signal and as a gaggle of television cameras followed his every move, Raymond headed across Main Street.

He was putting on the first public demonstration of a device designed by a quartet of electrical engineering students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to help blind people locate crosswalk signal buttons.

Raymond, assistant director of human resources for the city, was delighted. He had suggested the research to the college a year ago.

Even if crosswalks have audible signals for pedestrians to let them know when it is safe to cross, the blind still struggle with locating the pole and the button, Raymond said.

"Often a blind person has to wait until a sighted person comes along and pushes the button," he said. ''And that can be inconvenient, especially in winter and inclement weather."

"We didn't intend this, but it would also let a blind person know when they are approaching an intersection," said junior Brian LaPlume of Leicester, who developed the device with junior Matthew Geiger of Stoughton and seniors Rabin Tamang of Brattleboro, Vt., and Jeremy Lynch of Auburn.

Still, some questioned whether it would catch on.

"I hate to throw cold water on something built with such a well-meaning spirit," said James Gashel, director of governmental affairs for the 50,000-member National Federation of the Blind, headquartered in Baltimore. "But the concern is this is one more device to be saddled with."

Gashel is blind, but said he tends not to use crosswalk signal buttons. The real test, he said, will be whether people, who have adapted to crossing streets with a cane or dog, will feel they really need the device enough to add it to a growing collection of gadgets.

"You can build beeping devices to help the blind locate lots of things, including their coffee cups," he said, "But unlike sighted people we don't have cars in which to throw all this paraphernalia. We have to carry it around."

The students and their adviser, Leonard Polizzotto, director of a college center aimed at applying technology to social issues, are seeking a patent and working on a prototype that would be small enough to fit into a cane or dog lead.

They eventually hope to market the device, expected to cost communities about $100 per traffic signal button, with the college getting a partial interest in their company, Polizzotto said.

The students said they questioned at least 100 blind people through the Internet and other surveys before they developed the device, which uses a narrow band of radio waves to transmit signals to a receiver attached to the signal button.

"That was the hard part," LaPlume said. "The technology was easy."