动手套可以帮助盲人“看见”周围环境

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This is the prediction of a British team who has developed a prototype glove, dubbed SenSei, that provides vibration cues to a wearer.

The glove features a battery-operated ultrasonic senor on the back of the glove, which emits different levels of sound similar to a car's parking sensor.

Ultrasound waves are sent out, hit the obstacle, and when they return to the glove, they vibrate the fingers.

Different patterns and intensities let the user know how their distance between objects.

The glove was designed by two students at Nottingham University who wanted to develop agadget that could be used without much training.

'At present, the attachment is quite large, but we are working on a new system containing amicroprocessor that is smaller and not as heavy,' Raivat Luthura, one of the designers told Julia Pierce at The Engineer.

The design recently won ￡1,000 ($1,540) and first prize in the Entrepreneurship and Business Competition run by Nottingham University Business School.

'This will also make it more aesthetically pleasing. We're going to use the money from the competition for further development of the device,' Mr Luthura added.

It follows the launch of a similar device last year which helps people who are blind and visuallyimpaired to learn Braille.

Vibrating motors at the knuckle of each finger in the gloves buzz to tell a wearer to press a corresponding key, and the system tells them which letter they are typing.

And the gloves even teach the wearer when they are not paying attention.

'The process is based on passive haptic learning (PHL),' said Thad Starner, a Georgia Tech professor who is also the technical lead on Google's Project Glass.

'We've learned that people can acquire motor skills through vibrations without devoting active attention to their hands.