# How Kite *works.* you learn it in a minute Tap any sound below to hear it, rendered by the real earpiece. Then see why a beep beats a sentence, how you talk to Kite, and what the earpiece said on the demo walk. ## Every sound means one thing. Where a sound comes from is where the thing is. What it sounds like is what it is. How fast it repeats is how soon you'd reach it. where ### Direction Rendered with a model of the human head, so each ear hears it a fraction of a millisecond apart. what ### A sound per thing A soft knock, a rough buzz, a clean pip, a falling glide. Never more than two at once. how soon ### Getting closer Beeps start about three and a half seconds before you'd meet, then speed up and rise in pitch. At the last second Kite says "Stop." which way ### The beacon A tick from the direction of your next turn. Bright when you're facing it. ## Inside or out, it sees for you. Where you are decides what Kite uses. The earpiece and the voice are the same either way. ### Indoors the chest camera alone - Beeps for the chair, the door frame, the sign at head height. - Point it at a **menu, a book, a street sign or a screen** and say "read this". Kite reads it to you, line by line. - "What's in front of me?" gets a sentence, not a list of boxes. For anywhere a drone can't fly. ### Outdoors the drone, plus the chest camera - The drone watches the route, the crowd at the corner and the car turning in. - A beacon ticks toward your next turn; directions arrive on time or not at all. - At a hazard Kite stops you, waits, and tells you when the way is clear. For walking somewhere you need to go. ## The beep is the interface. Speech is slow. Two words take most of a second, and the person stepping off the curb doesn't have one. So Kite saves its voice for decisions and lets sound carry the distance. Each object gets a time-to-contact, worked out from how fast the gap is closing. The rate of the beeps follows it, from one a second at the edge of the warning zone to almost nine a second just before contact. Your ears read rhythm faster than any sentence. Faster means closer. That's the whole manual. _Seconds between beeps, from the earpiece's sonar settings (1.0 s → 0.11 s)._ ## Just say it. Press an AirPod once and talk. Simple requests run on the laptop with no internet at all; everything else goes to Claude, which sees what Kite sees, and comes back in Cartesia's voice. 1 **Walker:** Kite, take me to my usual coffee shop. **Kite:** Okay, heading to Blue Bottle Coffee. _Moss knows “usual”_ 2 **Walker:** Bring me to the end of the street. **Kite:** Okay, I'll guide you to the end of the street. _works with no internet_ 3 **Walker:** Read this to me. **Kite:** Lunch menu. Margherita pizza, 14 dollars. Caesar salad, 11 dollars. _Claude reads, Cartesia speaks_ 4 **Walker:** What's around me? **Kite:** A person slightly left, 2 meters; a car at 2 o'clock, 8 meters. _from what the cameras see_ 5 **Walker:** Remember this place as the bench. **Kite:** Saved. I'll remember this place as the bench. _Moss, again_ 6 **Walker:** *(walks toward someone)* **Kite:** Stop. Person ahead. _plain code, no AI, instant_ the little kite answering you is the drone, flying just above and behind your head ## What the earpiece *actually said.* The log from the 41-second walk on the home page, verbatim. Every line has a priority; a "Stop." cuts in front of everything else. **python -m earpiece run --sim walk ```text 000.5s said [nav] Head north on Lyon Street for 60 meters. 006.5s said [hazard] Person, ahead. 008.4s said [critical] Stop. Person ahead. 013.4s said [hazard] Obstacle, ahead. 015.5s said [critical] Stop. Obstacle ahead. 018.0s said [hazard] Don't walk. 022.5s said [hazard] Walk signal is on. 025.0s said [nav] Turn left onto Bay Street. 026.8s said [nav] Small crowd ahead on the right. 030.0s said [system] Drone battery is at 28 percent. 033.1s said [hazard] Heads up: The curb at Lyon Street and Bay Street is very tall: step down slowly ``` --- Kite · https://trykite.pages.dev/how · Pages: [Home](https://trykite.pages.dev/) · [How it works](https://trykite.pages.dev/how) · [For judges](https://trykite.pages.dev/judges) · [About](https://trykite.pages.dev/about) · [Contact](https://trykite.pages.dev/contact) · [Privacy](https://trykite.pages.dev/privacy) · [llms.txt](https://trykite.pages.dev/llms.txt) · [Sitemap](https://trykite.pages.dev/sitemap.xml)