Fatimah Abubakkar

Halo

A halo has always meant something quiet and circling. A ring of light, a sign of grace, a presence that surrounds without intruding. Halo borrows that idea and gives it back to the body. What if guidance didn't have to be heard, held, or carried as a sign of difference? What if a wearable could move with the body and speak through touch, felt rather than announced? Halo is a quiet new sense that lets the body read unfamiliar space the way it already reads the familiar.

“Halo is a haptic spatial awareness system designed for people with functional low vision, those who navigate familiar environments confidently but lose their footing in unfamiliar ones like airports, transit hubs, and dense city streets. The system has three components: The Clip, a pair of small ring-shaped wearable devices worn anywhere the body knows it best, from shoe to belt to sleeve to chest; The Beacons, a speculative infrastructure layer placed throughout public spaces, broadcasting spatial signals to nearby Halo devices; and The App, a voice-first companion layered onto Google and Apple Maps that translates routes into a haptic vocabulary of four patterns: obstacle ahead, approaching transition, arrived, and turn left or right. Halo doesn't replace sight or existing mobility tools. It joins them, adding a quiet new sense to the body's existing knowledge of space, so the freedom to move through unfamiliar environments comes with confidence, privacy, and control.”