Blind man invents waterskiing solution

“Waterskiing is fantastically exhilarating. It is something that, as a disabled person, you can get a lot out of. I was frustrated at the time that the blind slalom wasn’t a very good simulation of the able-bodied slalom”, the inventor confessed.

Being an engineer, Chris decided to take action and solve the problem on his own by creating a low cost audio slalom.

He used the sensor of a laser printer, the sound generator from a car anti-theft alarm and a cheap microprocessor to build an audio slalom.

“Based on the length and angle of the rope and knowledge of the boat’s speed, it is fairly basic geometry to work out where the skier actually is in terms of how far down the course have they gone, how wide have they gone. You can essentially construct an audio equivalent of the buoys and then give the skier a very loud signal that they are now going around the buoy”, Chris explained.

Chris participated in several disabled championships.

More info: https://twitter.com/Chris_mairs

Adapted from: http://www.ingenia.org.uk/Ingenia/Articles/624

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