‘Roshni’ to help visually impaired identify notes

Tribune News Service

Ropar, January 23

The Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar, has come to the aid of visually impaired, who have been facing difficulty in identifying the new currency notes introduced by the Reserve Bank of India, post demonetisation.

The application “Roshni” is free of cost. A team comprising Dr Puneet Goyal, PhD scholars Mandhatya Singh and Joohi Chauhan, and student R Ram from the institute demonstrated the app in the presence of students from Institute for Visually Impaired, Chandigarh.

The claimed that “Roshni” was the first Android app that worked successfully with new INR currency notes. The user after downloading “Roshni” from the Play Store has to bring the currency note in front of the phone camera and the app will provide audio notification intimating the currency note’s denomination. If the image is not clear or not focussed, or the desirable minimum prediction accuracy is not achieved, the user is provided aural notification to “try again”.

The usability aspects were considered in designing this app and it worked in a broad range of light conditions and holding angles, they added.

Dr Puneet said, “Seeing AI App by Microsoft is only other application that facilitates recognition of both old and new Indian currency notes, but it is an iOS App and not available for Android users. It fails to identify the currency notes which are folded or old.”

A faculty member and students of the visually impaired institute said, “Prior to demonetisation, they used to differentiate the currencies based on the length and width of the note. Now, it is difficult for them to identify the denomination due to similarity in sizes of new and old notes of different denomination.”

Ropar IIT Director SK Das said the team would continue working on it for further improvisation.