VOA常速英语:消费类电子产品展览会展现尖端人文科技

The Consumer Electronics Show or CES is a showcase for the world’s best technology. As expected, a big topic is how many things are now wired and online.

But CES is also focused on finding technological answers to questions regarding health, wellness and robotics. That’s a particular interest to people in the handicapped community. This year’s CES highlights how technology can make their lives easier, too. Like this device that plugs into any electric wheelchair, and moves by reading the user’s facial expressions. Creator Paulo Pinheiro says the Wheelie 7 was inspired by a smile. A few months ago, I was at the airport. I was waiting for my fly. And I saw this girl in a wheelchair. She could not move her hands or her legs. But she had a great smile, you know, those kind of smile that cannot stop to think about it. So we knew that we could use our experience in robotics and deep learning to translate that smile into comments to control her wheelchair. Users like Eric Ingram say there’s a bit of a learning curve, but the expression controlled wheelchair works. The wheelchair was a little awkward at first. Using facial expressions instead of other manual forms of movement, it was a little confusing. But once you use it for a decent amount of time and get comfortable with the controls, it becomes a lot more natural and easy to use.
People with vision disabilities have new options as well. Jeffrey Fenton from eSight says his electronic glasses can open up a whole new world for the vision impaired. So you could be living with, in Rosa’s case, 20 over 200 vision. And when you put on eSight and you look ahead, you could see the fine detail on a piece of paper or in someone’s eyes. It’s remarkable. Rosa Henderson was impressed by her time with the eSight glasses. I’m seeing things that I’ve never seen before with the unit. So it’s like it’s revolutionary for people who are visually impaired.
And for people with limited ability to grasp objects, Scott Kim has created a leather glove that helps increase a person’s grip. This device helps them to be able to close their hand by themselves, so that they can do basic activities like tooth brushing, opening the door, just grabbing a coffee cup. NeoMano will go on sale this year and cost about two thousand dollars. The other products are already available on the market.
Kevin Enochs VOA News.