Moved by the difficulties experienced by visually impaired people in
identifying the new rupee notes, a team from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Ropar (IIT-RPR) in Punjab has developed
Roshni, a free Android app that makes it easy to identify the
different denominations.
The team of Dr Puneet Goyal and Ph.D students
Mandhatya Singh and Joohi Chauhan started
working on Roshni about three months ago.
We decided to work on the app after we heard about the issues visually
impaired people faced in identifying the notes. Many of them said they were
cheated as well. We did a lot of proto testing, used advanced artificial
intelligence tools and put together a rich dataset of more than 13,000
images of INR currency notes under varied conditions. – Dr Puneet
Goyal, Assistant Professor, IIT Ropar
Roshni is currently on beta testing mode on Google
Playstore and has been tested and found effective in a broad range
of light conditions and holding angles. All the user has to do is bring the
note in front of the phone camera and the app notifies the user about the
denomination.
In a statement, IIT-Ropar said, “Roshni is the first Android App that works
successfully with new INR currency notes.”
The team is open to the idea of offering the app to the RBI. Roshni has been
tested in a well recognised blind school in Chandigarh.
“After demonetization it became very difficult for visually impaired people
to identify the denominations, due to the similarity in the sizes of new and
old notes,” said S Nirmala, faculty member of the
Chandigarh Blind School. “This is especially the case for
people who have lost their vision due to old age or some other conditions.
For them, Roshni will be beneficial.”
S K Das, Director, IIT-RPR has said the
team is committed to improving on the app. “IIT-Ropar is very interested in
making a societal impact and we are keeping Roshni free of cost. People with
disabilities have many talents but the amount of time taken by them in doing
basic day to day tasks like identifying currency notes takes up too much of
their attention, leaving them with little time to hone their abilities. So,
we must develop such assistive technologies that makes daily tasks easier for
them.”
Going ahead, the team is looking at support from other blind schools and
organizations so they can add advanced features.
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Source: https://newzhook.com/story/21170
