At 18, Manning Whitby has already gained national recognition at the Canada-wide Science Fair receiving top honours for developing a wearable perception aid for blind or visually impaired individuals.
“I took a month and half off from Grade 12, “ said Whitby. “It was very pleasing to see that all the work that I had done and all the risks I had taken to hinder my marks in terms of university acceptances, came through in different aspects.”
Whitby will attend Ottawa University this fall, however, before he does, Whitby’s heading off to Bulgaria to participate in the European Union Contest for Young Scientists.
“I’ve been working all summer to advance the prototype,” Whitby said.
Currently the device gives users the ability to navigate their surroundings with confidence, independence and comfort.
“There are two parts to the system – the collection system – all these array of sensors gather the information from the surroundings. The communications system collects spatial information to the users. Not only does it give you information about the depth of obstacles, but also the location,” said Whitby.
“In other words, this device focuses to give users a greater understanding of their environment through vibrations.”
So how did this all begin for Whitby?
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“When I was in Grade 9 our teacher introduced a science fair project and that’s when my understanding of the limitation of that community and my engineering background merged. I thought why not solve the challenge that their facing with this school project now,” recalled Whitby. “It’s advanced way more than that.”
“Now we’re looking to expand and overcome the ‘cane’ in terms of path navigation, and through GPS – through different features that provide an advanced technological experience for those users with the essence of convenience,” he said.