The Simulator
Walk the block by feel.
Watch a scripted walk, or steer it yourself. Then turn the street off and go by the buzz alone. Six scenarios, from a morning sidewalk to a street corner. Three sensors that each miss something the others catch. Every timing comes from published research.
A scripted walk. Zero effort.
TEACHES The baseline. Every signal appears once.
Radar has something moving 6 meters ahead. No buzz yet. Someone walks toward you and steps to your right. Hold your line.
72ms
66 ms sensor frame + 6 ms arithmetic and drive
- Radar · Person passing · 6.4 m
KEYS · LEFT RIGHT OR A D STEER · SPACE PLAY · R RESTART · B BLIND · M SOUND · 1 TO 6 SCENARIO · ESC SIGHT
HONEST LIMITSThis is a picture of the idea. The hardware is not built yet.
- This is a picture of the idea. The hardware is not built yet.
- Research says 4 motors per band, not 3. The first-build ankle schematic is being corrected.
- Direct sun shortens the laser grid's range to about 2 m. Radar and sonar cover that gap.
- Sonar misses heavy coats beyond about 1 m. The laser grid and radar see them.
- Nobody has proven the stairs coding on real stairs yet. The bench decides.
- Street crossings are not solved by any device. The cane and your hearing come first.
Why we trust the architecture: Katzschmann and colleagues (IEEE TNSRE 2018) put a time-of-flight belt and a haptic strap on 12 blind users for 162 trials. Obstacles and staircases were detected, with zero collisions in blindfolded trials. The kit follows that result, and the numbers in this simulator come from published research.
This is a picture of the idea, not the finished hardware. On the real kit the whole path from sensor to skin runs in about 72 milliseconds, driven by distance sensors, with no camera and no AI in the safety loop. The three laws hold everywhere: where it buzzes is where the world is, how strong is how close, and when it moves you follow it.