Recently we were contacted by two young research students from the School of Engineering research at TCD. Robbie Fryers and Talita Saad have invented an app to support people to travel independently. They wanted our help to trial and pilot the app. It consists of a smart phone and an e.watch. Family, carers etc can programme specific routes and directions to locations. The carer/family member can follow the progress of the wearer, whilst the wearer can follow the directions on the watch which vibrates when it is time to turn corners and cross roads etc. The invention is still being tweeked and updated but Talita and Robbie hope to get funding to mass produce the app.
Both Tomas and Neill are former students of TCD as they completed a two year course at the Irish Centre for Disability studies.
Tomas and Neill are extremely tech savvy and their input and feedback on this project was very useful for the researchers. They will be helping out on other aspects of the project in the future. This app will greatly benefit anyone who has difficulty with map reading orientation and navigating their way to specific places. Look out for the app it is called A Way to B which hopefully will be launched in the near future.