ReadMe: Affordable braille display for graphs & data visuals

The ECE department at UT Austin offers two types of Senior Capstone Projects: (1) Projects sponsored by corporations (2) Projects that have the potential to turn into startups. Given my interest in entrepreneurship, I eagerly applied to the Startup Senior Design Capstone with a team of 4 other ECE students. The course spanned across two semesters with the following milestones:

1. Develop the engineering design for a product
2. Validate the design through prototype construction and testing, modeling, simulations, and manufacturing analysis
3. Develop a company prospectus and seek venture funding for the project

My teammates and I were deeply interested in applying engineering to help disadvantaged communities. Throughout undergrad, many of us were tinkering with personal projects to further explore this interest. In fact, one of my classmates on the team, Sijin Woo, had developed a smart mobility aid for blind and visually impaired people for an embedded systems course a few semester prior. The project was referenced frequently in our early brainstorming sessions and we recognized that there was very little innovation and funding in educational tools for blind and visually impaired students.

I scheduled meetings with teachers at the Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired so the team could better understand the needs of blind & visually impaired students. Through our first few meetings, it became clear that blind students struggled learning math concepts that involve visual aids like graphs and charts. This is because current braille technology is expensive and inaccessible. We landed on our product for the senior capstone project: an affordable braille display to represent tactile graphs and charts for students.

We named the product ReadMe and immediately started brainstorming possible designs and developing low-fidelity prototypes. Since braille can be displayed in 2x3 or 2x4 matrices, we built a prototype with a 4x4 matrix which can easily scale to these different sizes. Each dot can be raised within the matrix via thermopneumatic actuators. This process involved filling multiple brass tubes with a volatile liquid. Once the tubes are filled, they are sealed with a thin, nitrile membrane. Then, each brass tube is filled with a nichrome heat wire. When the brass tubes heat up, a force is created by heating the volatile liquid, causing the flexible membrane to expand.

At this point in the semester, COVID-19 hit campus and we were all instructed to collaborate remotely on our final prototype. With most of the electrical, mechanical, and chemical engineering development completed, we turned to building a user interface that could seamlessly integrate with JAWs (a computer screen reader that converts to text to speech). I developed low fidelity designs which involved a simple drag and drop display where educators and students could easily import images, files, and text. This information would be the input which would trigger the braille display to build the corresponding tactile graphs.

The course culminated in a virtual demo day where we presented ReadMe in a 2-minute pitch which showcased our designs, prototypes, and partnerships with local schools. This Senior Capstone Project was the perfect way to apply my interests in engineering, entrepreneurship, & design. It also re-affirmed my passion for using technology to promote education equity.