GRASB

Tactile Grasping Aid – Development of an AI-controlled vibrotactile wristband to support purposeful, natural grasping in blind people

People with visual impairments often face difficulties in performing complex and precise grasping tasks in their daily lives because they lack the visual components of hand-eye coordination. As a result, they are particularly reliant on the assistance of sighted individuals in unfamiliar or constantly changing environments, or must laboriously feel their way around objects. The market for assistive devices for the blind currently offers no satisfactory solution to this specific problem.

Therefore, the goal of the ZIM-funded innovation project “GRASB” is to develop an AI-controlled vibrotactile navigation wristband to support purposeful, natural grasping in blind people.
The project is a collaboration between the University of Münster, feelSpace GmbH, and the University of Osnabrück. feelSpace GmbH is responsible for the iterative development of hardware, software, firmware, and a voice interface for a vibrotactile wristband designed as a grasping aid. At the University of Osnabrück, an AI application with speech processing and object recognition is being developed based on methods of “embodied cognition” to control the grasp of a desired target object.

At the University of Münster, research is focused on developing an intuitive grasping logic using vibrotactile stimulation to enable blind people to interact precisely with objects in three-dimensional space. The goal is to enable people with visual impairments to grasp objects as naturally as possible. To achieve this, the vibration patterns must be designed so that users can clearly understand the spatial position of an object (direction and distance) with minimal cognitive effort and thus guide their hand precisely to that location to successfully grasp the object. Thus, the intended system not only provides tactile information transfer but also promotes complex, nuanced spatial perception and interaction with objects in space.

Research Team:

Funding period:

01.09.2025-31.08.2027 (24 Monate)

Sponsor:

Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand (ZIM)

Cooperation partner:

Contakt:
Carola Baier: carola.baier@uni-muenster.de