Representatives of the organizations that won the first and second stage of "Development-NTI" and the "UMNIK-NTI" competitions, presented their projects and told about the progress of their implementation on September 21-22, 2017, at the International Conference "PHYSTECHBIOMED 2017".

The Business Bureau was presented by the Technical Director, Ph.D. mat. Artashes Sarafaslanyan, who introduced the project of a multi-channel sensory information processing system ("SOMSI") designed to help disabled people with simultaneous hearing and visual impairment to integrate into the social life of the society as much as possible, and to expand opportunities for independent orientation and independent living.

This system can be used by deafblind people to solve a number of problems, for example, for recognizing text, peoples, objects (at home, at work, and on the street), graphics and images (getting a text description). The system will also allow disabled people with hearing and vision impairment in orientation on the street and in the premises, to warn and inform them in emergency situations.

Three main system functions:
— Navigation and orientation
— Object recognition
— Recognition of sounds

And potential users are divided into three groups depending on the main communication channel HEARING, VISION and TACTICAL. In all cases, incoming information is processed and recoded into meaningful text.

— In the case where the main communication channel is HEARING, meaningful text is transformated into SOUND and transmitted to headphones, a hearing aid or a cochlear implant.
— In the case where the main communication channel is TACTICAL, the information is transferred to tactile messages and/or "alarming" vibrations.
— In the case of VISION, meaningful text is transformed into VISUAL PRIMITIVES and transmitted to the visual (or RETAINAL) implant.

The system analyzes the received video and audio information, purifies the signal using digital algorithms for eliminating natural disturbances, transmits data to the neural network computing platform for the subsequent transcoding of video and audio information into a symbolic form (meaningful text). Then this text is presented in one of the forms accessible to deafblind - the display of visual primitives, voice dubbing or output in tactile form.

If tactile monitors (such as the Braille display or Morse communicator), hearing aids and even cochlear implants have long time ago and firmly become part of our life, then the application of visual IMPLANTS can be attributed to the newest challenges of our time.

The project is developing with the participation of the Fund for the Support of the Deafblind "So-Edinenie", the Center for the Development of Social Innovations "Opportunity Technologies" and the Scientific and Production Laboratory "Sensortech" and the financial support of the Foundation for the Promotion of Innovations.

Materials on this project of the Business Bureau company will be published in the official illustrated catalog of Neuronet projects.