[Image above] The new Ashirase in-shoe navigation system is designed to help people with visual impairment navigate better on their own. Credit: Honda News Room
Navigating a big city is tough even with Google telling you where to go. For people with visual impairment, the challenge is often even greater and can significantly impact their freedom of mobility.
In recent years, more city planners are taking sustainable urban mobility into consideration, which emphasizes evaluating the whole functional urban area when designing rather than just accounting for cars. And while installation of more pedestrian infrastructure such as tactile paving and sound signals can play a positive role in promoting mobility among people with visual impairments, relying on governments to install this infrastructure can be a long and frustrating wait.
In June, we covered the development of an affordable braille display that can help people with visual impairments take mobility into their own hands. Today, we look at a new in-shoe navigation system being developed in Japan that could improve mobility as well.
Honda supports business creation through IGNITION
The in-shoe navigation system, named Ashirase, is being developed through IGNITION, a business creation program that gives Honda Motor Co. associates the opportunity to commercialize original technologies, ideas, and designs that contribute to solving social issues and creating new value for people.
Honda R&D Co., Ltd., a research and development subsidiary of Honda, started the IGNITION program in 2017. Program managers initially sought to commercialize proposals from within Honda, but they added an option in 2020 to pursue commercialization through new business ventures as well. In April 2021, Honda announced that IGNITION would become a company-wide program, thus opening the program to all Honda associates in Japan.
Learn more about IGNITION in the video below. (The video is in Japanese, but you have the option to select auto-generated subtitles in your preferred language.)
Ashirase: A new in-shoe navigation system
Ashirase Inc. is the first new business venture to originate from IGNITION, and the idea for the Ashirase system came from developer Wataru Chino.
In a Japanese article describing the new venture, Chino explains that the idea for Ashirase came in the wake of a tragic walking accident, in which a relative of his with visual impairment fell into a river and lost his life.
“That accident led me to think again that walking is one of mobility,” he says in the article (translated via Google).
Chino applied for IGNITION a year ago but did not make the final selection. However, after IGNITION added the option to pursue ideas through new business ventures, he was encouraged to apply again—and this time was selected.
The Ashirase system consists of a 3D shoe-mounted vibration device and a smartphone app. As the wearer walks, the smartphone app indicates direction by causing specific parts of the shoe-mounted device to vibrate—the front vibrator when going straight, the left or right vibrators when turning, and all vibrators when it’s time to stop.
In a Honda News Room article, Chino says that though he is sure the team will face many obstacles as they work toward market launch of Ashirase, “We will overcome such obstacles one by one and devote ourselves wholeheartedly to realize the freedom of mobility for visually impaired people.”
Ashirase Inc. aims to release the Ashirase system for commercial sale before March 31, 2023. Learn more about the Ashirase system in the video below.
