Lechal (ले चल) started as a personal project to build a haptic navigation aid for the visually impaired. After 6 months of initial demos, Krispian and I decided to pursue Lechal further as a venture. See Lechal Initiative.  After several iterations, Le-chal has evolved as a full-fledged gait analysis and feedback platform. 

Lechal initial prototypes and design got the MIT TR35 Award. The unobtrusive design of Lechal is its most significant feature. The mechanism collects sensor data, learns gait patterns and condenses geographical navigational information, and lets the user feel the directional and proximity information through haptic stimulation.

Lechal was started in 2010 with a simple sketch and an Arduino Lilypad prototype at Hewlett Packard Labs. Later we pursued clinical trials with LV Prasad Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins University, and evolved to:

• • • • Lechal – Launched via Bestbuy and Amazon Retail
      • http://ivibe.de/ – Launched in Germany