Company Profile
Orbit Research
Profile date: 2025-01-02
Orbit Research: Assistive Technology for the Visually Impaired
Orbit Research is a United States-based company, founded in 1998, that specializes in the development and manufacture of innovative, affordable assistive technology products designed to promote an independent lifestyle for people who are blind or visually impaired. Headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, the company???s core mission is to fulfill the urgent, global need for accessible technology solutions at an affordable price point.
Core Business and Technology
The primary focus of Orbit Research is to bridge the accessibility gap in education, employment, and daily living through breakthrough devices. The company's innovations center on providing non-visual access to both textual and graphical information.
A cornerstone of the company???s success is its proprietary, low-cost braille cell technology. This revolutionary approach utilizes mainstream components and manufacturing processes to produce high-quality, refreshable braille at a fraction of the cost associated with traditional piezoelectric technology. This technological advancement is key to making refreshable braille devices economically viable for a much wider audience globally, particularly in developing countries.
Products and Services
Orbit Research offers a diverse portfolio of products, which can be broadly categorized into several families of devices, along with supporting software and accessories.
Refreshable Braille Devices (Orbit Reader and Orbit Slate Families)
The Orbit Reader family are multi-functional devices that combine three essential functions: a refreshable braille display, a standalone book reader, and a note-taker. * Orbit Reader 20 and Orbit Reader 20 Plus: These devices feature a 20-cell, 8-dot refreshable braille display. They can be used as a standalone reader to access files (including BRF, BRL, and text files) from an SD card, which is particularly useful for students without live internet or computer connectivity. They can also connect via Bluetooth or USB to PCs, Macs, iOS, and Android devices to function as a braille display for screen readers like Voiceover or Brailleback. * Orbit Reader 40: A next-generation braille display with 40 braille cells, featuring enhancements like cursor routing buttons, haptic (vibration) feedback, USBC charging, forward and backward braille translation, a clock, an alarm, a calendar, and a calculator. It can also pair to multiple devices. * Orbit Slate Series: This includes the Orbit Slate 340 and Orbit Slate 520, which are multi-line refreshable braille displays designed for more complex or extended reading and writing tasks. * Orbit Speak and Orbit Speak Plus: These are speech-based braille note-takers, offering a blend of braille input/output with speech functionality and entertainment center capabilities in the Plus model. * Orbit Writer: A compact companion device that provides a Perkins-style braille keyboard for fast and accurate text entry on smartphones.
Accessible Calculators (Orion Family)
To support accessible STEM education, Orbit Research developed a family of talking scientific and graphing calculators in partnership with Texas Instruments: * Orion TI-84 Plus: A fully talking graphing calculator that provides non-visual access to the popular TI-84 platform used widely in secondary and post-secondary education. * Orion TI-30XS Multi-view: A talking scientific calculator that is essential for students needing a non-visual tool for complex mathematical and scientific computations.
Tactile Graphics Display
- Graphiti: This device represents a significant breakthrough by being an interactive tactile graphic display. It offers non-visual access to a wide array of graphical information, including charts, drawings, flowcharts, floorplans, images, and photographs, by using an array of moving pins to instantly render tactile graphics.
Other Consumer Products and Software
- Bank Note Identifiers: The company manufactures the iBill (US Bank Note Reader) and the Canadian Bank Note Reader, devices that identify the denomination of paper currency, promoting financial independence.
- Orbit Player: This is a DAISY and media player, specifically designed and manufactured to provide an affordable, accessible learning tool for the visually impaired community, particularly highlighted in the Indian market with support for multilingual text-to-speech.
- Software and Apps: Orbit Research also develops software applications to enhance connectivity and learning. Examples include Orbit Chat (an app for face-to-face communication with people who are deafblind) and the Orbit Teacher and Orbit Teacher Remote platforms, which are designed to facilitate remote braille education and create an inclusive classroom environment.
The company???s product line demonstrates a sustained commitment to making essential tools???from basic reading and note-taking to advanced graphing and graphical interpretation???accessible and affordable to the blind and visually impaired community worldwide.