Blind Assistant is an attempt to help blind human, using softwares that run not on expensive and complex hardware, but on a simple Sony PSP.
Blind Assistant uses Nanodesktop tecnology for windows environment, it is able to speak with the user using ndFLite, a porting of the speech synthesis engine originally developed by the Carnegie Mellon University and it is able to recognizes the name and the position of the people that are present in that moment in your room, using complex algorithms (as Intel EigenFaces/PentLand PCA).
The face recognition tecnology is provided using ndOpenCV, a porting of the original Intel OpenCV libraries developed by the same author of the Blind Assistant and of the Nanodesktop SDK.
Filippo Battaglia’s version of ndOpenCV improves the Intel code because the algorithms have been modified in way to use EMI (Enhanced Mathematical Interface), an API integrated in Nanodesktop system, and written totally in assembly, that is able to use Sony VFPU to speed up the necessary computations. Using EMI, we can obtain the necessary CPU power.
This program works only on PSP custom firmwares. It has been tested (under PSPE and PSP) with the CF 3.71 M33-4, 3.80 e 3.90 M33-3. The program is able to auto-update itself using the wireless connection.
The actual version of BlindAssistant is able to recognize the name of the people that are present in front of the blind.