Earlier in November, Nimsiri Abhayasinghe and Dr Malitha Wijesundara, academic staff at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), visited the Association for the Blind of WA.
Dr Iain Murray, founder of the Curtin University Centre for Accessible Technology (CUCAT), is working closely with staff at SLIIT to establish joint laboratories to develop assistive technology for people with vision impairment.
Dr Iain Murray, Dr Margaret Crowley, Dr Malitha Wijesundara and Nimsiri Abhayasinghe.
‘The advantages of working with universities in Sri Lanka are many and include the highly qualified personnel (in Engineering and ICT) and a significantly lower cost in equipment, space and manufacture,' said Iain.
‘These facilities will take advantage of the work of both undergraduate and postgraduate researchers to examine affordable and open technology solutions for the vision impaired community.'
‘We have five PhD students in Colombo (all experienced academic staff at SLIIT) and four at our Bentley campus, with several more joining us soon.'
Mr Abhayasinghe and Dr Wijesundara run several Curtin undergraduate courses in engineering and computing on an offshore campus. All courses are to Australian (Engineers Australia and Australian Computer Society) standards and accreditation.
Dr Wijesundara is the Dean/Academic Affairs/Head of Electronic & Computer Engineering.
Mr Abhayasinghe is currently a Senior Lecturer at SLIIT Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering and has recently achieved candidacy for his PhD which he is undertaking at Curtin within the CUCAT research group.
His research topic is "Indoor Localization System Based on Human Gait for Visually Impaired People using Mobile Devices" and forms a significant part of CUCAT's overall project "Smart Phone Based Indoor Navigation System for Vision Impaired and Blind".
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