Schlagwort: WhereIsIt

Innovationen, Investigationen

WhereIsIt: A New Step in Inclusive AI

On August 3, 2026, the final presentation of the WhereIsIt project took place at the FHNW School of Business. The project introduced a voice-based assistant that helps blind and visually impaired people remember and retrieve the locations of everyday objects through simple spoken interaction. Designed with a clear focus on accessibility and ease of use, the prototype works entirely offline, stores all data locally, and avoids cloud services and cameras, ensuring that sensitive personal information remains under the user’s control. The streamlined push-to-talk concept makes the application intuitive and focused on its core task: remembering where things are, while its local architecture demonstrates how AI can support users without compromising privacy. The project was initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel of the FHNW School of Business, and the prototype was developed by Damian Huckele as part of his bachelor’s thesis. The project builds on several years of research into Inclusive AI at the FHNW School of Business. In 2024, Oliver Bendel presented his paper „How Can Generative AI Enhance the Well-being of the Blind?“ at the AAAI Spring Symposium „Impact of GenAI on Social and Individual Well-being“. Based on extensive tests of the Be My Eyes app and its MLLM-powered Be My AI feature, the paper demonstrated how multimodal AI can significantly increase independence and environmental awareness for blind and visually impaired people, while also discussing the ethical implications of AI-mediated perception. This research laid an important conceptual foundation for subsequent projects. In 2025, the VISUAL project, initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel and implemented by Doris Jovic, explored how multimodal AI could make wildlife livestreams accessible through detailed spoken scene descriptions generated from public webcam images. WhereIsIt now extends this line of work by shifting the focus from perception to memory support. Together, these activities illustrate how Inclusive AI can address different everyday challenges through practical, privacy-conscious, and user-centered applications that promote greater independence for blind and visually impaired people.

Fig.: Prototype user interface and accessibility features (Image: Damian Huckele)

Innovationen, Projekte

WhereIsIt Reaches Mid-Term Milestone

WhereIsIt, an object reminder assistant for blind and severely visually impaired people initiated by Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel and implemented by Damian Huckele, reached its mid-term presentation on May 19, 2026. The inclusive AI project focuses on a lightweight speech-based system that allows users to store and retrieve object locations without continuous camera use. The work completed so far includes the literature review, problem analysis, requirements definition and the first system design concept. An important milestone was an expert interview with Steve Weidel, blind developer, founder of INKLUTEC and specialist in accessibility and assistive AI technologies. The interview confirmed the practical relevance of the project and highlighted key requirements such as simple voice interaction, portability, reminder functions and optional Bluetooth tags with acoustic tracking. The planned prototype architecture is Python-based and combines speech recognition, language processing, local object-location storage and text-to-speech output. The next project phases include prototype development, testing and the evaluation of Bluetooth integration.

Fig.: WhereIsIt can help both blind and sighted people (Image: GPT Image 2)

Projekte, Studien

WhereIsIt? Here It Is!

Blind and severely visually impaired people depend in everyday life on systematically placing objects or remembering their location. Because visual control is lacking, everyday items such as keys, medication, documents, or technical aids are often misplaced or must be searched for with considerable effort. This leads to loss of time, stress, and unnecessary dependence on other people. Existing solutions such as Microsoft’s „Find My Things“ often rely on visual object recognition or complex assistance systems. These are technically demanding, prone to errors, energy-intensive, and not always acceptable from a privacy perspective. What is needed is a simple, robust, and practical solution for everyday use that does not require continuous camera usage and can be operated intuitively. A speech-based object reminder assistant called WhereIsIt is being developed on the initiative of Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel. The user can use voice input to record which object has been placed where (e.g., „I put my medication on the kitchen table“). The information is stored locally and provided with a timestamp. When asked later („Where is my medication?“), the system outputs the last known location via speech. Optionally, inexpensive Bluetooth tags can be used that emit an additional acoustic signal to make the object physically easier to locate. The focus is on ease of use, low technical complexity, and high reliability. Possible technical components include: voice capture and speech recognition; extraction of object and location information; local data storage with time reference; voice-based feedback; optional integration of BLE tags. When AI components are used, it is a project within Inclusive AI. The kick-off meeting will take place on March 17, 2026 at the FHNW School of Business. Damian Huckele has been recruited to implement the project.

Fig.: A blind person