The kick-off meeting for the VISUAL project took place on March 20, 2025. It was initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel from the FHNW School of Business. “VISUAL” stands for “Virtual Inclusive Safaris for Unique Adventures and Learning”. There are webcams all over the world that show wild animals. Sighted people can use them to go on a photo safari from the comfort of their sofa. Blind and visually impaired people are at a disadvantage. As part of Inclusive AI – an approach and a movement that also includes apps such as Be My Eyes with the Be My AI function – a solution is to be found for them. The aim of the project is to develop a prototype by August 2025 that enables blind and visually impaired people to have webcam images or videos of wild animals described to them. The system analyzes and evaluates them with the help of a multimodal LLM. It presents the results in spoken language via an integrated text-to-speech engine. As a by-product, poaching, bush and forest fires and other events can be detected. The project is likely to be one of the first to combine inclusive AI with new approaches to animal-computer interaction (ACI). Doris Jovic, who is completing her degree in BIT, has been recruited to work on the project.
BY OLIVER BENDEL
