A system enabling independent travel and access to urban infrastructure for the blind and visually impaired: integration of wireless technologies with global and local navigation systems.
Worldwide, there are 314 million of visually impaired and 45 million of them are blind. According to EU reports for every 1000 Europeans 4 are blind or visually impaired. Vision loss is the most serious sensory disability that causes approx. 90% depravation of entire multi sense perception for a human.
In spite of a long lasting research record independent mobility and orientation aids for the blind still await for a ground-breaking methodology and technology that would effectively support visually impaired individuals with safe and effective travel in unknown environments. No single solution of electronic travel aids has gained a wider acceptance within the blind community. The low cost white cane (with no mounted electronics) still remains the primary travel aid for the blind.
The aim of this project is to develop a prototype system enabling the blind and visually impaired independent travel and access to urban infrastructure. The envisioned system features a distributed architecture. It comprises wearable units (dedicated and smartphones) communicating wirelessly with stationary beacons and wide area networks. The visually impaired user will decide of system configuration that best aids his disability.
System elements that are developed within the project tasks are as follows:
- remote navigation module for the blind – a solution enabling a person located at a remote terminal (stationary or mobile) to guide visually impaired individuals by monitoring transmitted life images of the path in front of the blind traveller
- public transport information module – employing a server storing on-line information about location of public transport vehicles
- dedicated applications for smart phones equipped with speech synthesizer – serving as a navigation aid capable of informing the user of nearest points of interest (POIs) and routing pedestrian paths to indicated destinations
- vision based obstacle detection and navigation module – detecting and warning of the obstacles employing combined electronic technologies (stereovision, inertial sensors, electronic compass, GPS) and spatial audio technology enabling generation of acoustic “images” of the environment
- a network of radio beacons mounted in urban infrastructure – the network aids the visually impaired in more precise positioning in in-door areas and improves GPS positioning precision outdoors, e.g. locating public transport stops
- haptic interface – a device allowing to build haptic maps of the environment intended to be used as a training aid for the visually impaired
The project is conducted in year 2010-2013 with cooperation with the Polish Blind Union Lodz Branch.