Honda has already demonstrated and on more than one occasion its ability to surprise with proposals where technology plays a fundamental role. The latest is a GPS navigation system that is placed in the shoes and would help blind people on the move.
Honda’s GPS for the blind
Honda, a Japanese company founded in 1948, does not need many introductions. As soon as you become a little interested in the motor world, you will already know her for being the owner of one of the most important teams in the Moto GP world championship. But even if you don’t like motorcycle racing, you will also know it for its cars that circulate in cities around the world.
However, the company goes far beyond different transportation vehicles and has long had a program that is focused on investigating potential new businesses . This is where proposals as striking as the Asimo robot and its very human movements or that personal transport vehicle similar to the seagway have come from in recent years.
Well, the latest innovation may not be as striking for most users as the previous ones, but it could be an important improvement in the quality of life of all those users with vision problems or directly blind.
Ashirase, a company that together with Honda and its New Business Creation Program is behind this development, has created a striking GPS navigation system that is placed in the shoes.
Thanks to it and the joint use of a mobile application similar to Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc., the user is able to trace a route and receive information through a vibration system that is integrated into the shoe of the same as well as warnings when analyzing the environment through which it is moving thanks to other integrated sensors.
That is, it is something similar to what the Apple Watch offers to all users right now. The difference is that since it is designed for blind people, changes have been added to facilitate these movements. The most striking as we said is the vibration system that depending on whether it wants to tell you whether to stop, turn left or right, etc., it will vibrate in a certain way and at certain points.
In the video that you can see below, despite being in Japanese, it is better understood how this GPS navigation system for shoes works.