Project Grant R44EY029213

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (CFDA 47.070 - Computer and Information Science and Engineering program) to the University of Maine System provides $1,126,197 to develop a multisensory navigation assistance tool to aid individuals with visual impairments. The three-year project aims to: Identify information access requirements and optimize delivery via multisensory smartphone interfaces to support indoor navigation for blind and visually impaired individuals. Create...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Early-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) Project Grant, awarded under CFDA 47.041 Engineering, will leverage virtual reality (VR) and wearable technologies to study how individuals with visual impairment navigate through crowded urban environments. The $300,000 grant, awarded to New York University, aims to elucidate the sensorimotor interactions and cognitive processes underpinning the navigation of persons with visual impairment through...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $570,780 Project Grant under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program to Lehigh University to develop an inclusive community-wide location-based services system called CityGuide. The project aims to design, deploy, and evaluate seamless and scalable indoor/outdoor location-based services that provide auxiliary wayfinding, emergency evacuation, remote assistance, and transit support for people with disabilities and the...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $200,000 Project Grant under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to San Francisco State University (SFSU), a Hispanic-Serving Institution, to develop an AI-driven sensory augmentation system for visually impaired individuals. The goal of this 2-year research project is to improve the independence, accessibility, and well-being of visually impaired persons by leveraging natural representative sound and AI technology. The project aims to enhance...

This $749,685 National Science Foundation project grant under the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships program (CFDA 47.084) will fund the development of an Automated, Integrated, Multimodal Software (AIMS) system to improve inclusive access to information for persons with disabilities. Saint Louis University leads a consortium that includes software companies Vital, Unar Labs, and Viewplus Technologies to build a unified framework for authoring, converting, and delivering accessible content...

This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), under CFDA 93.865 Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research, provides $591,838 to Ablelink Smart Living Technologies LLC to develop and evaluate a universally designed app and web-based tools to support independent access to ridesharing services, including driverless vehicles, for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The project aims to address...

Tiami LLC will develop a three-dimensional indoor tracking system utilizing digital television (DTV) stations as positioning beacons under a $197,362 cooperative agreement from the Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology. The award is part of the Science, Technology, Business and/or Education Outreach program (CFDA 11.620) to evaluate and stimulate technological innovation. Specifically, Tiami will design signal processing algorithms and evaluate positioning...

This National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CFDA 47.070) Project Grant award of $140,758 to the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) aims to explore the feasibility of using teleoperated robotics to assist individuals with visual impairments. The key goals of this one-year project are to: 1) conduct surveys and interviews with visually impaired individuals to understand the challenges they face in employment and explore their interest in using...

This $335,050 National Science Foundation project grant supports research at Montclair State University to develop a more comprehensive cognitive model of wayfinding development in children. The grant, awarded under the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences program (CFDA 47.075), will investigate how wayfinding skills unfold across development among children ages 6 to 10 with diverse social and demographic backgrounds. Specifically, the researchers will recruit children to complete...

This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) program (CFDA 47.070) provides $150,000 to the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) to develop smart technologies for evaluating and enhancing building accessibility for people with disabilities. The key activities include: 1) conducting a community meeting to understand the environmental stressors wheelchair users experience in their daily environment, 2) further...