Eyes-Free Yoga, a Kinect-based program that makes it easier for the blind to practice yoga

University of Washington research team develops Eyes-Free Yoga, a program based on Microsoft Kinect that allows visually impaired people to practice yoga.

Following a conventional yoga class with a monitor can be very complicated for people who suffer from visual impairments., and to help them in their practice a team of researchers from the University of Washington has developed a tool, based on Kinect technology Microsoft.

The program is called Eyes-Free Yoga and uses Kinect motion sensors to read a user's body angles and, next, provide auditory feedback on how to perform postures in real time. The system calculates the desired angles with simple geometry and the law of cosines. Read pose angle and tracking skeleton technology, next, tells the user how to move to reach the desired position.

The program, which is in the development phase and has been funded by the National Science Foundation, uses Microsoft Kinect software to track body movements and provide real-time auditory feedback for all six yoga poses.

Eyes-Free Yoya can provide around 30 different voice commands, made in simple language, that serve to adjust shoulder posture, arms, legs or torso.

The result of research conducted by the University of Washington is a video program that allows blind people to interact verbally with a simulated yoga instructor.

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