HandSight Camera Project Led by Froehlich, Findlater and Chellappa In the News

Several media outlets recently featured innovative research based in computer vision by faculty and students in the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL), one of 16 centers and labs in UMIACS.

HandSight, a miniature camera system that can help people who are visually impaired to read, was highlighted in PC Magazine and was also covered in a story published in the New Scientist.

HandSight was initially funded by a $1 million grant from the Department of Defense.

Jon Froehlich, an assistant professor of computer science, is primary investigator of the grant, with Leah Findlater, an assistant professor in the iSchool, and Rama Chellappa, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, serving as co-principal investigators. All three hold appointments in UMIACS.

The news coverage was spurred by publication of a paper in the ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, with Lee Stearns, a fourth-year doctoral student in computer science, listed as the lead author.

HCIL is a partnership between the iSchool and UMIACS.