A cane is how someone moves through the world independently.
Smart cane competition awards R$900k to develop AI-powered mobility solutions for 6 million Brazilians with visual impairments, modernizing decades-old assistive technology. Educational tech projects like Glicogotas App help diabetic children understand their condition through interactive digital tools, already tested in partnership with Brasília health services.
- Smart Cane Innovation Competition awards 900,000 reais total to ten finalist projects, with winners announced March 2026
- Brazil has 6 million people with visual impairment, including 500,000 who are completely blind
- Glicogotas App for diabetic children being tested in partnership with Brasília health department
- Creative economy sector growing 3% annually; one in four new jobs expected in this sector in coming years
Festival Curicaca highlights innovative projects combining technology with social inclusion, featuring smart canes for visually impaired users and educational apps for diabetic children, demonstrating how AI and digital solutions can enhance autonomy and quality of life.
The Festival Curicaca opened its doors this week with a simple premise: technology works best when it solves real problems for real people. Across the exhibition halls in Brasília, dozens of projects demonstrated what that looks like in practice—from canes that sense obstacles to apps that help children understand their own bodies.
The centerpiece was the Smart Cane Innovation Competition, launched in April by Brazil's Industrial Development Agency and the Paraná state government. One hundred teams submitted ideas. Ten finalists were selected to present their work on Wednesday, the second day of the festival. The stakes are concrete: each winning project receives 90,000 reais, with the possibility of an additional 90,000 reais if the team shows meaningful progress over the next three months. Winners will be announced in March 2026. The total investment—900,000 reais—reflects a deliberate bet that the cane, a tool largely unchanged for decades, is ready for the twenty-first century.
Roberto Leite, an attorney with Paraná's Social Development and Family Secretariat, stood at the competition stage with his guide dog Rock and made the case plainly. The traditional cane has always meant independence for people who are blind or have low vision. But it has limits. It detects obstacles only at waist height. The new designs use sensors and artificial intelligence to perceive the world more completely—to warn users of hazards they cannot yet see, through sound or vibration, allowing them to navigate public spaces with greater confidence and freedom. The numbers behind this matter: Brazil has six million people with some form of visual impairment, according to the national statistics institute. Half a million are completely blind. For them, a smarter cane is not a luxury. It is a tool that expands where they can go and what they can do.
Beyond the competition stage, the festival showcased educational technology that addresses a different kind of barrier. Talita Kellen, a biology student at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro, presented a project born from her own experience. She has had type 1 diabetes since age six. When she was diagnosed, the explanations were clinical and abstract. She wondered what would happen if someone explained diabetes to children the way children actually learn—through stories, characters, sound, interaction. She and two colleagues developed the Glicogotas App, a digital adaptation of an educational book that makes the mechanics of the disease and its management concrete and engaging. The app is now being tested in partnership with Brasília's health department, reaching diabetic children at public health clinics. The project has already drawn attention at international conferences.
Other institutions brought their own innovations. The Federal Institute of Acre presented four projects, including a robotic system that teaches through quizzes about the environment and an automated irrigation system that monitors soil moisture in real time. The Federal Institute of Brasília unveiled smart glasses designed to work alongside a traditional cane, using laser sensors to detect obstacles and alert the user through sound or vibration. Each project, in its own way, asked the same question: what happens when you put technology in service of people who have been left out of the conversation?
The festival also hosted a panel on creative economy, a sector that has been growing at an average of three percent annually. One in four new jobs created in Brazil in the coming years is expected to be in creative fields. The Capital Moto Week, described as Latin America's largest motorcycle festival, drew 856,000 people over ten days in 2025 with 120 musical performances. The Sesi cultural organization mobilized 73 companies in 2024 to produce cultural activities. These numbers suggest that innovation is not confined to laboratories. It lives in events, in experiences, in the way people gather and create meaning together. Technology and creativity, the festival suggested, are not separate forces. They move in the same direction—toward a world where more people have access to tools that expand what they can do, understand, and become.
Notable Quotes
The cane has remained essentially unchanged for decades, but we are in the twenty-first century—an era of innovative and accessible products. It is time to modernize the tools that ensure mobility for blind and low-vision people.— Roberto Leite, attorney, Paraná Social Development and Family Secretariat
I have been diabetic since age six, and I realized that a more playful form of communication could help other children better understand what diabetes is.— Talita Kellen, biology student, Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does a cane matter so much? It seems like a small thing.
It's not small to the person using it. A cane is how someone moves through the world independently. For six million Brazilians with visual impairment, it's the difference between being able to go somewhere and being stuck at home. A smarter cane that detects obstacles you can't yet see—that changes what's possible.
But why now? Canes have existed for centuries.
Because the technology finally caught up. Sensors and AI are cheap enough and small enough to embed in something you already carry. And because someone asked the question: what if we modernized this? That's what the competition did. It said the old way is not good enough anymore.
The diabetes app seems different. That's about understanding, not mobility.
It is different, but it solves the same kind of problem. A child diagnosed with diabetes gets terrifying information in adult language. An app with characters and sounds and stories lets that child actually understand what's happening in their body. Understanding is its own kind of freedom.
Is this just about technology, or is it about something else?
It's about paying attention to people who've been overlooked. The cane hasn't changed in decades because nobody with power was asking how to improve it. The diabetes app exists because a young woman who lived with the disease asked: what would have helped me? That's where real innovation starts.
What happens after the competition ends?
The winners get money and time to build. Some will succeed. Some won't. But the question has been asked now. The possibility exists. That matters.