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"The safest thing for a blind man is to sit
still. I ain't sitting still," said Thomas Panek, 50, who lost
his vision in his early 20s due to a genetic condition and runs
Guiding Eyes for the Blind, a guide dog school.
The marathon enthusiast got tired of having to follow slower
runners as a guide. So he decided a year ago to find a way to
run solo.
He turned to Google to find a way for a phone to "tell me where
to go," said Panek, who believes "humans are born to run."
He worked with the Alphabet Inc unit to create a research
program. A smartphone camera picks up a painted 'guideline' on a
running track. An app detects the runner's position and gives
audio guidance through an earpiece.
"It's like teaching a kid how to learn where the line is," said
Google researcher Xuan Yang.
Pandemic-related social distancing gave a boost to the research
to circumvent human and canine helpers.
"To be able to be here, it's real emotional," Panek said after
his test of the app on a chilly fall afternoon, in an event
sponsored by Google and the New York Road Runners Club on
Thursday.
"It's a real feeling of not only freedom and independence, but
also, you know, you get that sense that you're just like anybody
else."
(This story corrects headline to remove reference to 'marathon')
(Reporting by Reuters TV; Editing by Richard Chang and Rosalba
O'Brien)
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