The whole point of a long road trip is to take in the stunning views that make up for the long hours of traveling. However, a blind or partial sighted person misses out on these joys. Ford Italia is looking to change that and has introduced a new prototype window gadget that lets the blind people experience views from a car window using touch.
Feel The View prototype is placed above a passenger window and has a textured button in its center. When a blind person pushes the button, a camera takes the picture of the scenery. The captured photograph is then transformed into a high contrast monochrome image that is reproduced on the glass using LEDs.
This allows the blind passenger to feel the image by dragging their fingers across the window where the different shades of grey vibrate at different intensities. This lets the person imagine the landscape beyond the glass in their mind.
Ford Italia is not giving away much detail about Feel The View and about how the system actually works. It has been built in collaboration with GTB Roma and Aedo. You can see what it looks like in the video below:
