Students invent insulated cup for the blind

“By observing blind people, I found that when they drink hot water, they were easily hurt by the steam because they aren’t able to see”, said Ruoya Chen, a student from 6th grade, from Gaoxiong Siwei school. In order to help the blind, Ruoya Chen and her classmate, Yancheng Wu, spent one year developing this insulated cup for blind people.

The smart insulated cup is equipped with an infrared sensor. When the blind person approaches the cup, they will be informed of the water temperature inside the gadget with either a Chinese or English voice (e.g. “now it’s 42 degrees centigrade”), and then they can be more careful when they drink water. In addition, when the person is more than one meter away from the insulated cup, the cup will also make a sound to remind him/ her to drink water every hour. Re-charging the cup is also quite easy, which only requires the placing of an outer cap on the cup, which automatically recharges the cup without causing the user to struggle to find the charging holes in a rush, and it also reduces the risk of electric shock.

Yancheng Wu said that after designing the insulated cup, the inventors blind-folded themselves in order to experiment their innovation, and found those functions worked quite well. They’ve also participated in the 2017 IEYI (International Exhibition for Young Inventor) and won the Gold Award.

“Once the cap is modularized, it can be well applied to fit all sizes of thermos cups”, shared Yancheng Wu. Their innovation has not yet been commercialized, but they are looking forward to it and are willing to help more visually impaired people.

Adapted from: https://bit.ly/2G6CPhr