The Artificial Intelligence group at Freie Universität is collaborating with a research group at the Telekom Laboratories headed by Dr. Pablo Vidales and the Berlin Association for the Education of the Blind and Visually Impaired e.V.

Norbert Zillmann (left) tests the Vorlesegerät unit for the blind that has been developed by Dr. Pablo Vidales from the Telekom Laboratories and Professor Raúl Rojas (right) from Freien Universität Berlin.

The joint project is called InformA. After completion of the field trials, it will receive funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education & Research through its EXIST seed funding program for university-based business start-ups. In addition, IBM Germany is providing funding for further development of the device at Freie Universität.



"InformA" is a small computer that connects wirelessly to the Internet, the device operated like a radio. Users can choose between different information channels. By pressing a button, the time or the weather will be announced, and current newspapers available as audio files (currently Der Tagesspiegel and taz).

In addition, e-mails can be read aloud by the device. The user can answer e-mails by dictating a message. An integrated camera makes it possible to have printed documents such as letters or package information leaflets read aloud fully automatically. In more complex cases - as a statement of account for a heating bill -  device users can take a document photo  and send it to a call center.

Persons doing community service instead of military service, who work for the Berlin Association for the Education of the Blind and Visually Impaired e.V. then provide further assistance.

"Through the wealth of information provided by InformA, the device can also be of interest for older people without previous experience with computers, who until now have not had access to information offered through the Internet," according to the project leader, Raúl Rojas.



Some 25individuals have volunteered for the field trials. In a second phase, another 25 will be added. To optimise the device, participants will be interviewed interviewed during the trials, on how they cope with the device. There is no charge for participating in the field trials.



Dr Armgard von Reden, (left) director of governmental programs at IBM, who signed the cooperation agreement between Freie Universität and IBM, said: "The integration of persons with disabilities has a long history at IBM. That applies to our products, where we are constantly working to provide barrier-free access to the information society.
But it also applies to the nearly century-old tradition of employing people with disabilities at IBM."

"InformA is an example of an information appliance. Even in the age of the Internet, it is not always necessary to use a fully equipped computer for online communications. Specialised equipment, such as internet radios, can cover specific needs, if the equipment is small, portable, and easy to use.

"

German Telecom is to provide 50 DSL lines and just as many InformA information devices for the participants in the field trials. After the field trials IBM Germany will be supporting the project at Freie Universität Berlin as part of its diversity program. IBM will provide funding for student asistants and computers.


RETINA IMPLANT APPROVAL BY 20011

Visually impaired or blind patients with degenerative retina conditions would be very happy to regain mobility, find their way around, able to lead an independent life, recognise faces and read again. Wishes documented by a survey conducted a decade ago.  At last some of this could become reality according to presentations at the “Artificial Vision” international symposium in Bonn which was staged by the Retina Implant Foundation and the Pro Retina Stiftung zur Verhütung von Blindheit.

Work has been underway on developing retina prostheses for more than two decades. Research is  particularly intensively in Germany, with scientists and patients working in tandem and obtaining government funding. “We didn’t want high-tech just for space and defence programs but .. high-tech for people as well,” recalls Professor Rolf Eckmiller,  neuro-informatics specialist at the University of Bonn and a pioneer in the field shown by Stefan Borbe (left) sees graphic data on an eyeglass display. (Credit: Eckmiller / Uni Bonn)

Now investment is coming to fruition.  German research consortiums claim to lead the field, with three of four research teams presenting their findings in Bonn being German.

The presentations show that all the electronic retina prostheses convey visual impressions, or phosphenes. Patients participating in a US study were able to distinguish light and dark, to register movement or presence of larger objects.

Early reports from German research group led by Professor Eberhart Zrenner (right) of University of Tübingen indicates that restoring visually impaired patients’ ability to read is not just wishful thinking. Some patients are able to read letters if these are 8cms high.

“We’re in the final run-up,” claims (left) Professor Peter Walter from the University Eye Clinic in Aachen. Walter was the scientific director behind the “Artificial Vision” symposium . “The final studies prior to market launch have begun or are set to begin,” he says in his latest progress report.

The studies are designed to test the long-term tolerability of retina implants and benefits in everyday life. Manufacturers expect implants to be approved by 2011.Understandably there is considerable interest among patients in the new products.

“Compared with the study we conducted 10 years ago, patients now have amuch clearer idea [of what they expect from retina prostheses],” says Helma Gusseck, (right) chair of the Stiftung Retina-Implantat.

Gusseck, who also chairs the Pro Retina Stiftung, suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, the degenerative retina condition and can now only distinguish between light and dark.

For him the research findings are a relief: “You can, so to speak, go blind without worrying about it, because you know that the systems will soon be ready and we therefore have an option.”

Sub-retinal implant
Nevertheless, this is really only the beginning. “What we’re seeing are different systems racing to compete,” says Peter Walter. In one of the systems – the sub-retinal implant – the chip is implanted under a layer of nerve cells in the retina. There, like the photoreceptors in the retina, it receives light impulses, converts these into electrical signals and transmits them to the nerve cells of the retina.

The retina prosthesis developed by Professor Zrenner’s team in Tübingen and that developed by a US team led by Joe Rizzo (right) and Shawn Kelly at the Boston Implant Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts, work according to the same principle.

Epiretinal implant
In the case of the epiretinal implant the chip is fixed to the upper-most layer of nerve cells. There it receives data from a small camera installed in glasses worn by the patient and likewise converts these into impulses for the nerve cells.

This is the principle employed by the retina prostheses developed by the two other German research teams. One system – IRIS – was developed by the Bonn company IMI, the other (EPIRET3) by a research consortium that includes scientists from the RWTH Aachen and the Fraunhofer Institut für Mikroelektronische Schaltungen und Systeme (Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems) and doctors at the University Eye Clinic Aachen led by Peter Walter.

Alongside these, various systems which also differ from one another in a number of other details, the next generation of retina prostheses is already in the pipeline in laboratories around the world. Engineers, computer science specialists, biologists and doctors are pooling knowledge for new strategies to link electronic devices and nervous systems.

Dermis implant
Teams of researchers in Switzerland and Japan, for example, are developing systems in which the chip is no longer implanted in the eye but outside it, on the dermis that protects the eyeball in the socket. Only the electrodes that stimulate the nerve cells in the retina are inserted inside the eye through a small incision.

Optic nerve, visual cortex activation
Chinese researchers are developing retina prostheses that, instead of stimulating the nerve cells of the retina, stimulate the optic nerve directly. And an American team is trying to activate the visual cortex in the brain directly.
At this point it is not clear when, if ever, any of these systems will be ready for patient trials being  still at an experimentation stage.

Retinal prosthesis
Interest has also been shown in projects to use other communication signals between nerve cells. Australian and American scientists are working on retina prostheses that produce biochemical impulses instead of electrical ones.

The idea is for the retina prostheses to release neurotransmitters according to spatially and temporally controlled patterns and thus stimulate the nerve cells.

The question remains whether retina prostheses will eventually be able to register shapes, as Professor Rolf Eckmiller (foreground left) hopes they will. “To do this will require a retina prosthesis capable of learning and that is able to produce a kind of melody of impulses that can be recognised by the brain and classified as a particular shape, like a cup.”

He is convinced that the complex central vision system – which occupies a third of the cerebral cortex – can only register a shape if the right “melody” is transmitted via a sufficiently large number of cells.