Duke University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
An Innovative Approach to a Refreshable Braille Display
Max Cohen
Advisor: Dr. Bob Guenther
Traditional Braille displays that take text from a computer and convert
them into a Braille format cost many thousands of dollars, and are
thus not accessible to the average blind American.
However, by utilizing
bimetallics as the medium in which to create the Braille characters
instead of much more costly piezoelectrics, a refreshable Braille
display can be created for a fraction of the cost of other methods.
An electric current is sent through a
Cuprothal heating wire which
causes the bimetal to bend, raising a plastic rod 0.5 mm, the height
of a Braille dot.
When the current is
turned off, the bimetal quickly
cools and the rod will fall back into its hole, allowing a different
character to be created.
The full final report is available here in Adobe Acrobat Reader (pdf) format.