After prestigious Ericsson win, UBC students continue working to improve product to help the vision-impaired

A group of UBC computer-science students recently won first prize at the 2016 Ericsson Innovation Awards in Stockholm, Sweden.

Working with the prestigious annual competition’s theme of “truly inclusive cities”, the team developed a mobile software application called SoundVision that transforms 3-D spatial information into sound, which may be able to help visually impaired people to "see".

The device's sounds vary in pitch and frequency through vibrations on the skull to accurately detail an individual’s surroundings.

The contest involved 843 teams from 72 countries, including one from the lauded Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The competition jury included Sweden's Prince Daniel, and Ericsson officials narrowed the hundreds of teams down to four finalists by mid-March. The MIT entry finished in second place, and teams from Cyprus and Spain claimed third and fourth place, respectively.

A month after the final phase of the competition on May 26, first-year computer-science student Karan Grover told the Georgia Straight by phone that the intervening rest was very much needed after eight months of visualizing, building, and finessing their prototype.

Grover, 18, laughed as he recalled how team leader Y.K. Sugishita, 24, originally contacted the SoundVision members, which also ended up including Jonathan Ho, 21, and Tanha Kabir, 18.

“Y.K. sent out an email to all the [UBC] computer-science students [saying] he wanted to build something for his coworker,” Grover said. “There was even an interview process.”

Already Grover and the rest of the team are thinking of the future, with talk of branching out SoundVision’s portfolio and moving on to a promised Kickstarter campaign—which Grover assured was still on its way.

Going down a to-do list of improvements, Grover noted that the application's actual sound was too “alienlike” and “unnatural”. He remembered that as being a problem when telling people what he was working on, especially family members.

“I kept trying to describe to my mom what it sounds like by making weird buzzing noises,” he said.

Similar devices, Grover said, can cost enormous sums. One of the team's goals, he noted, is to make the product accessible and affordable.

“The other competitors, we got to learn from them,” he said about the contest itself and all the technologies on display. “The award reminded us that we’re not just there to make money.”