Most kids, as they grow up, study the world primarily with their eyes, quickly realizing the nature and shape of things in the world around them. Surely, most adults hit the image search section of their search engine to look up what things look like. Blind people, though, end up doing a lot of imagining because it’s hard to describe what an airplane or a horse look like. Indeed, a picture is worth a thousand words.
But how many words is a 3D printed object worth? Well, Yahoo! JAPAN has developed a kiosk machine that will print whatever object a person speaks into its microphone, so that blind kids can learn about the world directly and hands-on.
Check out the video of the machine, which we bet has a human making sure the right designs are sent to the printer:
More about the Hands On Search…
(hat tip: Gizmodo)