Haptic, a tech firm devoted to accessible navigation, is setting out to increase its haptic navigation expertise worldwide. Based in 2017 by CEO Kevin Yoo and a workforce impressed by a buddy’s imaginative and prescient loss, Haptic aimed to create a non-visual, non-verbal approach to assist these with blindness and low imaginative and prescient navigate with out relying on auditory or screen-based cues.
Display screen readers and voice-guided apps, although useful, usually aren’t sensible for navigating bustling metropolis streets or silent areas.
In line with Haptic’s head of operations, Enzo Caruso, tactile suggestions may function a common answer. Contact is intuitive, easy, and simply understood throughout all cultures, he notes, making it a useful software for guiding customers.
Haptic’s expertise makes use of vibrations, creating what the corporate calls a “haptic hall” – a sample of pulses that intensifies or shifts if the person veers off the meant path, successfully steering them in the appropriate path with out visible enter. This patented system, often called HapticNav, is suitable with smartphones and smartwatches.
Initially, Haptic developed its personal wearable for this navigation system. Nonetheless, with developments in shopper tech, the corporate pivoted to software-based options, utilizing present smartwatches slightly than competing with main tech gamers like Apple and Google. This strategic transfer lets Haptic attain a far wider person base via software program integration slightly than {hardware} manufacturing.
This 12 months marks a turning level for Haptic because it strikes from product validation to scaling its attain. Partnerships with main tech platforms may allow Haptic to convey its navigation software to billions, doubtlessly serving to each customers with imaginative and prescient impairments and others in complicated environments like crowded venues.
Yoo envisions eventualities the place customers can navigate on to a vacation spot – corresponding to an Uber at a busy airport – utilizing solely the pulses from their smartwatch, making Haptic’s expertise universally useful.
Haptic’s present partnerships with organizations like Waymap, Cooley, WID, Infinite Entry, and Aira illustrate its dedication to accessible tech. A latest million-dollar contract with Aira, an app that gives stay help to folks with imaginative and prescient impairments, exhibits how Haptic’s navigation can work in tandem with human help, decreasing the necessity for fixed step-by-step steerage.
Fairly wonderful, in the event you ask me!