3M and Discovery Education announced Sean Jiang from Gilman School as one of the top ten finalists from across the nation for the 2023 3M Young Scientist Challenge. It's a competition that encourages students to identify an everyday problem and submit a video showing the science behind the solution he or she came up with.
14-year-old Jiang decided to help those who can't see. Blind people had a hard time navigating（导航） objects that are medium to far range. So Jiang wanted to design something to give them a heads-up on obstacles（障碍） that may be incoming.
Jiang's inspiration came from the powers of the hearing system. "I learned in school that bats and whales are able to use echolocation （回声定位） to help them navigate and just use their sense of hearing and I also saw on YouTube some very skilled blind people that use echolocation to help them walk, "said Jiang.
Jiang started with a virtual reality setting and then made it a reality. His creation uses a depth camera that can detect how close objects are, thus giving enough time to dodge the obstacles. When a blind is walking with the device, the sensor of the depth camera gathers the information regarding the obstacles' position and distance. Then the AI system in it will turn the distance data into musical sound guidance. This could significantly increase the walking speed of a blind person as well as decrease the number of obstacles they hit.
Some other similar programs were alright at finding objects that were in close range, but Jiang still wanted the blind to experience the world even fuller so they were able to see stuff that was much further away than their circle of reach.
In October, the top ten finalists will compete in person in Minneapolis for the title of "America's Top Young Scientist" and a $25, 000 prize.
