Blind runner Thomas Bannick managed to run 5 kilometers in Central Park, New York, without relying on a dog or human help, using only artificial intelligence through headphones placed in his smartphone.
Panek, 50, who lost his sight in his twenties, developed the smart speaker system as part of the Project Guideline research project, in cooperation with Google.
The system is based on the smartphone camera capturing a guide line drawn on the jogging track, and the application monitors the person’s location and provides him with audio instructions through the earphone.
"The cooperation on this project helped me realize a personal dream. I am very grateful to the Google team .. I hope there will be more steps in our joint project," Panek said in statements published by the Google Blog.
Panek runs a dog school used to help blind people, but he is tired of using slow dogs to guide him on the road, and decided about a year ago to find a way to run alone.
The American hostility believes that people are born to run, explaining, "The safest thing for a blind man is to stay in his place, but I don't stay in my place."