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Using Google Glass for the greater good

Carolina senior Pranati Panuganti leads the student group Carolina Glass Explorers.

Two years ago, Pranati Panuganti knew very little about Google Glass.

Today, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill senior leads a group of 23 student members of the campus Carolina Glass Explorers club. The students are searching for ways to use the Internet-connected glasses for good and have focused on some primary projects: improving accessibility for hearing impaired visitors to Morehead Planetarium, helping doctors in Malawi better care for burn victims and sharing Google Glass with other students to teach them about the device.

“I saw a lot of potential in (Google Glass) for good,” Panuganti said. “There was a lot of negativity about it. I really wanted to see the good in this. I always look for the good in everything. I wanted to see the potential this has, what could be done with it to improve the future.”

Winning Google Glass

Panuganti was in an entrepreneurship course her first year at Carolina when a classmate shared details of a Google Glass contest. In 140 characters or less, contestants were to tweet what they would do if they owned Google Glass. At the time, the device wasn’t for sale to the public. The winners would get the opportunity to buy the glasses, which sell for $1,500 each.

Panuganti’s instructor in the course, Buck Goldstein, told the students that if one of them won, he’d find a way to pay not only for the device, but also the trip to New York so the winner could pick up the device and receive training on how to use it.

To Goldstein’s surprise, two of his students, Panuganti and Patrick Lung, won. “The Google people couldn’t believe it,” Goldstein recalled.

In her entry, Panuganti said she would use the device to “video chat people with disabilities from places they can only dream of going.” When she returned from New York, she knew she couldn’t fulfill her pledge by herself so she started the student club.

“I really thought I should give back to the University as well since I got the funding from them for the Google Glass,” Panuganti said.

Sharing the Glass

The members of Carolina Glass Explorers divided into teams. Two teams work on programming applications for the device while other students work on outreach projects.

The group now has three devices. They loan them to other student organizations and groups of campus. In August, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol L. Foltborrowed Panuganti’s Carolina blue Google Glass to wear during her speech at New Student Convocation.

“I want everyone to experience it,” Panuganti said recently. “Just this week, there were three business students doing projects on Google Glass. I was really excited.”

Glass in space

At Morehead Planetarium, staffers want to improve their shows for visitors who cannot hear.

“The planetarium is an immersive environment,” said Denise Young, director of education and planning at Morehead. “We want to put the audience in an environment and sort of have them suspend reality and be in space.” Adding captioning to the dome itself would jolt visitors back into reality, Young said.

With that in mind, the Carolina Glass Explorers are working to add closed captioning on the Google Glass for deaf visitors to the planetarium so they can follow along while the experience for other viewers is not interrupted. Adding closed captioning like this hasn’t been done before and is taking some time to figure out, Panuganti said.

“I really think this could be a breakthrough for all planetariums if we can figure the Google Glass out,” Young said. “If it is not Google Glass, this experiment will help us learn more about what (the solution) might be.”

Saving lives

For another project, the Carolina Glass Explorers are working with Dr. Anthony Charles, a UNC trauma surgeon and director of the UNC Malawi Burn and Surgical Initiative in Malawi.

The students are exploring whether Google Glass could improve care for burn victims in Malawi, where health care workers, doctors and surgeons are scarce. Getting treatment within 24 hours is crucial for burn victims, but a surgeon often is not available. That is where Google Glass might be used, Panuganti said.

Surgical residents treating these patients could wear the Google Glass. If they are unsure about how to proceed with patient care, the residents instantly could share images from the glasses with a surgeon who may be at home or working at another location. The attending surgeon could then instruct the residents on the next steps.

Charles said Google Glass could give physicians a close-up view of the patient’s wounds. Charles said he may bring Panuganti and another member of the group to Malawi with him to test out the plan. If the idea works, the glasses, along with other technology, such as GoPro cameras, will help save lives, Charles said.

Goldstein said the projects the Carolina Glass Explorers are working on are proof that the investment in the glasses paid off for the University.

“I think they are amazing,” Goldstein said. “The results way exceeded our expectations.”