Eyes are windows to the soul, and books are the stepping stones to human progress. However, there has been a group of people who don't have normal vision, cannot use their eyes to record wonderful moments of their life, or cannot read an endless ocean of books. To them, this wonderful world is so near, yet so far away.

Statistics show that there are more than 17 million visually impaired people in China. How can technologies support their barrier-free reading? This is a difficult problem that YANG Wenzhen, a research specialist at the Research Center for Humanoid Sensing of Zhejiang Lab, has been working on.

A few days ago, 75 people were awarded the title of "Young and Middle-aged Experts with Outstanding Contributions to Zhejiang Province in 2022" by the Zhejiang Provincial Government, including YANG Wenzhen. Based on his research experience, what is most remarkable is the research and development of braille intelligent sensing devices with completely independent intellectual property rights.

When rows of metal contacts float up and down as the words on the screen change, a clear sound comes out from the speaker synchronously. A small typewriter-like device is the intelligent braille learning machine developed by his team. "A traditional paper braille book is several times more expensive than an ordinary book with the same content, and characterized by complicated production procedures, long publication cycle, low information carrying capacity, and easy wear and short life." According to YANG Wenzhen, the braille intelligent sensing devices developed by his team include braille readers, braille learning machines and English braille machines, etc., covering three core application scenarios such as learning, reading and public services for the visually impaired people. At present, these devices have served over 100 special education schools, public libraries, assistive devices and technology centers and other entities and individuals nationwide, directly benefiting tens of thousands of visually impaired people.

Braille Intelligent Sensing Device

"With this machine, the visually disabled can read," said LU Linsong, a visually impaired person, who participated in the "Technology Close to Life" themed exhibition at ZJ Lab last year, experienced YANG Wenzhen's braille learning machine on the spot, and successfully read the Ten Scenes of West Lake. YANG Wenzhen said that based on ZJ Lab's research on intelligent science and technology, his research team proposed a digital braille learning method based on simultaneous visual-auditory-tactile stimulation and a multi-sensory information matching AI algorithm, which can synchronously output information with the same content as words, sounds and braille dots, and greatly improve the efficiency of braille learning for visually impaired people.

"We have also developed the world's first dense dot-matrix electromagnetic-driven millinewton-level accurate tactile display technology, as well as domestically leading core technologies such as AI real-time generation of digital braille resources. We integrate these intelligent technologies into braille intelligent sensing devices, and iteratively optimize the devices by keeping track of actual needs of visually impaired people, which won their unanimous praise." YANG Wenzhen said, "in order to develop these technologies, I have made friends with many visually impaired people."

His pursuit of scientific research is not limited to breakthroughs in a single technology or device. "I want to give robots/digital humans a true human-like tactile abilities to achieve a higher level of intelligence. We are working on national key R&D projects related to the tactile intelligent sensing of flexible interfaces."

YANG Wenzhen explained that now robots can grip objects strongly, but it is still difficult to better sense surface roughness, softness and temperature, etc. "Imagine a robot is fetching a cup of coffee. We hope that the robot can sense whether it's cold or hot, whether it's in a paper cup or a mug, whether it's grande or venti." He said, "when robots have such tactile ability to sense objects and are also combined with visual, auditory and autonomous decision-making abilities, the era of advanced intelligent robotics is not far away."

"We often have to spend one hundred percent of our efforts in solving one percent of the problem, turning possibility into ultimate certainty." YANG Wenzhen and his team members are always striving for and forging ahead on the road of exploring the frontiers of science and serving the public. In the future, they will focus on tactile sense research and make innovations to provide stronger support for multi-dimensional integrated sensing and the advancement of a smart society.