Walking into Priya Narasimhan's campus office, it's hard not to be struck by the impression that you've found it ... you've finally found the place where old cell phones go to die. Boxes stuffed with cell phones are everywhere—on the floor, on top of each other, on the couch.

She can't wait to show why she has so much clutter. From one of the boxes at her feet, the associate professor of engineering pulls out a cell phone, then grabs what looks like a cheap pen off a table. At her feet is a bag of groceries.

Now, it helps to close your eyes. You hear her rustling through the grocery bag. She places in your hand a small tin. You have no idea what it is, so you move the scanning pen back and forth over the item until there is a beep. You just found the barcode.

The scanning pen sends the signal to the phone, which matches the barcode against an online database. The whole process happens in the blink of an eye. The text-to-voice software has the answer:

"Green tea," says an automated voice. "Details?"

For people who can scan grocery shelves with their eyes, this may not seem like a big deal. But for those who can't see, it's a revelation, because it gives them independence, whether they're picking their favorite cereal without assistance or organizing their CD collection or telling the difference between a $5 or $20 bill.

"They can walk around with this," says Narasimhan, "and they can scan all the things in their lives."

The research project is called Trinetra, named for the third eye on the Hindu god, Shiva. It was borne from an experience Narasimhan had watching a visually impaired man trying to catch his bus on a miserable winter day. From his perspective, every bus that passed might have been the right one, so he had to continually step into the slushy street and ask bus drivers, or grab passers-by to read him the route numbers.

Narasimhan decided this was unacceptable from an engineering, as well as a human, standpoint. Trinetra was born. In the case of the man trying to locate his bus, the technology will enable a cell phone to not only download and read all pertinent bus schedules, but also to access GPS systems and tell which buses are pulling up and which ones are late.

The project has developed so quickly that there is now a spinoff company, BeaconSys, working to get its assistive devices on the market.

Staffing hasn't been a problem. "It is a soup kitchen project," Narasimhan says proudly. "We have many graduate students with full loads who come to us and say, 'I'll give you my one free day a week. I want to help.'"

In her office, the thing you notice after the cell phones is a giant painting of the Hindu elephant god holding court above the boxes of old cell phones. He is Ganesha, lord of success, destroyer of obstacles.

–BRADLEY A. PORTER (HS'08)