iKnowU - Multimodal Smart Glasses for the Decoding and Rehabilitation of Face Processing in Clinical Populations

Our ability to identify faces and decode emotional facial expressions is crucial for everyday social interactions. This ability is frequently compromised in visually impaired and blind people, which can have a significant negative impact on their quality of life. This innovative project proposes to develop new tools, "Augmented Reality Glasses", which allow visually impaired people to compensate for some of their difficulties in daily life. Thanks to this revolutionary tool, faces and emotional facial expressions can be automatically identified live and the information can be transmitted to patients via auditory feedback. The initial experiments and data collected are extremely encouraging, with very positive feedbacks from potential users.

This project is a collaboration between the Departments of Special Education (Prof. Nicolas Ruffieux), Computer Science (Prof. Denis Lalanne) and Psychology (Prof. Roberto Caldara), of the University of Fribourg. The recruitment of patients is in collaboration with the Swiss Federation of the Blind and Visually Impaired, as well as with the Neurorehabilitation and Neurology units of the Fribourg Hospital, and the Neuro-Ophthalmology unit of the Jules-Gonin Eye Hospital.