SixthSense: The Haptic Glove That Lets You "See" Through Touch

Haptic technology for the visually impaired often stops at proximity—telling you that something is there, but not what it is. Meet SixthSense, a revolutionary wearable built at HackPrinceton Spring 2025 by Kshitij Kochhar, Advaith Karthikeyan, and Priyadarshan Narayanasamy that aims to bridge that information gap.

The team developed a hardware-software solution that translates the visual world into a tactile language:

1️⃣ Computer Vision: Using a lightweight YOLO object detection model that can run directly on a smartphone, the system identifies objects in the user’s environment in real-time.

2️⃣ Haptic Mapping: These identifications (like "person," "phone," or "notebook") are converted into unique vibration embeddings delivered through a wearable glove and wristbands.

3️⃣ Sensory Substitution: By practicing with these distinguishable mathematical patterns, users can "read" their surroundings through touch, effectively creating a new sensory language for navigation and interaction.

By keeping the model small and the hardware accessible, SixthSense proves that high-level spatial awareness can be wearable, portable, and intuitive.

🔗 Check out how they built it on Devpost: https://hackprinceton-spring-2025.devpost.com/submissions/636907-sixthsense

Видео SixthSense: The Haptic Glove That Lets You "See" Through Touch канала Major League Hacking