New smartphone app can enable the blind to 'see the money' now

The visually impaired have a reason to smile, courtesy a new smartphone application that helps them ‘see the money’. The app aids in identification of notes

Kolkata: The visually impaired have a reason to smile, courtesy a new smartphone application that helps them ‘see the money’. The app aids in identification of notes.

‘See the Money’ detects the exact denomination from a simple photo of the note clicked via the phone. Developed by researchers Suriya Singh, Kumar Vishal and C V Jawahar from the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad, and Shushman Choudhury from IIT Kharagpur, the currency recognition software relays the information as an audio clip.

“It can be used on low-end smartphones. In our current approach we have been able to report a recognition accuracy of 96.7 per cent on 2,584 images. We have worked with the Indian rupee. However, it can be extended to other currencies,” Singh said.

The app will be available in English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu and Kannada. It takes 1.09 seconds to tell the currency denomination, running on a typical smartphone with specifics of 1.2 Ghz CPU and 1GB RAM.

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