Beep aWay
About Us
Carlos, João and Tomás are three students of Mechanical Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico and together we formed the Beep aWay. How did this idea came up, one wonders?
Within the discipline of Experimental Methods in Energy and the Environment it was asked to do an engineering project with a strong social component that also poses an engineering challenge in order to create a new and original product with applications in the world we live in. For this matter we decided to address an issue that often goes unnoticed by most, blind people mobility. Since this is a global problem, we focused on the Portuguese reality in order to study and conceive a device that could actually help these people move around from place to place on their daily lives.
We decided to do a device that detects specific dangers. This meant two things: first we had to understand what dangers are there for blind people when they are moving; and that the identification of this danger implies some kind of specific communication between the object and the person. To better understand the dangers blind people face every day we met with Mr. Paulo Santos, president of delegation of ACAPO in Lisbon. This association helps blind people in their daily problems and fights strongly for accessibilities for these people. In our meeting it became clear that a big problem they face every day are collisions on the street which lead to bruises or even concussions. So our device aims to help them not only move more safely but also with more confidence that they’re not going to get hurt.
