Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Evaluating indoor positioning systems in a shopping mall : the lessons learned from the IPIN 2018 competition

The Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) conference holds an annual competition in which indoor localization systems from different research groups worldwide are evaluated empirically. The objective of this competition is to establish a systematic evaluation methodology with rigorous metrics both for real-time (on-site) and post-processing (off-site) situations, in a realistic environment unfamiliar to the prototype developers. For the IPIN 2018 conference, this competition was held on September 22nd, 2018, in Atlantis, a large shopping mall in Nantes (France). Four competition tracks (two on-site and two off-site) were designed. They consisted of several 1 km routes traversing several floors of the mall. Along these paths, 180 points were topographically surveyed with a 10 cm accuracy, to serve as ground truth landmarks, combining theodolite measurements, differential global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and 3D scanner systems. 34 teams effectively competed. The accuracy score corresponds to the third quartile (75th percentile) of an error metric that combines the horizontal positioning error and the floor detection. The best results for the on-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 11.70 m (Track 1) and 5.50 m (Track 2), while the best results for the off-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 0.90 m (Track 3) and 1.30 m (Track 4). These results showed that it is possible to obtain high accuracy indoor positioning solutions in large, realistic environments using wearable light-weight sensors without deploying any beacon. This paper describes the organization work of the tracks, analyzes the methodology used to quantify the results, reviews the lessons learned from the competition and discusses its future

A Smart Real-Time Standalone Route Recognition System for Visually Impaired Persons

Visual Impairment is a common disability that results in poor or no eyesight, whose victims suffer inconveniences in performing their daily tasks. Visually impaired persons require some aids to interact with their environment safely. Existing navigation systems like electronic travel aids (ETAs) are mostly cloud-based and rely heavily on the internet and google map. This implies that systems deployment in locations with poor internet facilities and poorly structured environments is not feasible. This paper proposed a smart real-time standalone route recognition system for visually impaired persons. The proposed system makes use of a pedestrian route network, an interconnection of paths and their associated route tables, for providing directions of known locations in real-time for the user. Federal University of Technology (FUT), Minna, Gidan Kwanu campus was used as the case study. The result obtained from testing of the device search strategy on the field showed that the complexity of the algorithm used in searching for paths in the pedestrian network is , at worst-case scenario, where N is the number of paths available in the network. The accuracy of path recognition is 100%. This implies that the developed system is reliable and can be used in recognizing and navigating routes by the visual impaired in real-time

Indoor Inertial Waypoint Navigation for the Blind

Indoor navigation technology is needed to support seamless mobility for the visually impaired. This paper describes the construction and evaluation of an inertial dead reckoning navigation system that provides real-time auditory guidance along mapped routes. Inertial dead reckoning is a navigation technique coupling step counting together with heading estimation to compute changes in position at each step. The research described here outlines the development and evaluation of a novel navigation system that utilizes information from the mapped route to limit the problematic error accumulation inherent in traditional dead reckoning approaches. The prototype system consists of a wireless inertial sensor unit, placed at the users’ hip, which streams readings to a smartphone processing a navigation algorithm. Pilot human trials were conducted assessing system efficacy by studying route-following performance with blind and sighted subjects using the navigation system with real-time guidance, versus offline verbal directions

SLAM for Visually Impaired People: A Survey

In recent decades, several assistive technologies for visually impaired and blind (VIB) people have been developed to improve their ability to navigate independently and safely. At the same time, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) techniques have become sufficiently robust and efficient to be adopted in the development of assistive technologies. In this paper, we first report the results of an anonymous survey conducted with VIB people to understand their experience and needs; we focus on digital assistive technologies that help them with indoor and outdoor navigation. Then, we present a literature review of assistive technologies based on SLAM. We discuss proposed approaches and indicate their pros and cons. We conclude by presenting future opportunities and challenges in this domain.Comment: 26 pages, 5 tables, 3 figure

Voice Operated Guidance Systems for Vision Impaired People: Investigating a User-Centered Open Source Model

People who have impaired vision regularly use white canes and/or guide dogs to assist in obstacle avoidance. Guide dogs can also be of limited assistance for finding the way to a remote location, known as ??wayfinding?? Several electronic devices are currently available for providing guidance to a remote location, but these tend to be expensive, or make use of a Braille interface. This project investigated the suitability of a user centered client server approach for the development of a talking GPS system intended to fill a niche for outdoor wayfinding. The work resulted in a working prototype proof-of-concept system that uses a speech-recognition speech-synthesis interface. The prototype solution includes a custom web application which accesses the Google maps API. The system is intended to be scalable and extensible with additional features such as sensors for obstacle avoidance and access to web-based information such as weather, train or bus timetable information. The client server approach was found to be suitable for the development of this type of application

Assessment of Audio Interfaces for use in Smartphone Based Spatial Learning Systems for the Blind

Recent advancements in the field of indoor positioning and mobile computing promise development of smart phone based indoor navigation systems. Currently, the preliminary implementations of such systems only use visual interfaces—meaning that they are inaccessible to blind and low vision users. According to the World Health Organization, about 39 million people in the world are blind. This necessitates the need for development and evaluation of non-visual interfaces for indoor navigation systems that support safe and efficient spatial learning and navigation behavior. This thesis research has empirically evaluated several different approaches through which spatial information about the environment can be conveyed through audio. In the first experiment, blindfolded participants standing at an origin in a lab learned the distance and azimuth of target objects that were specified by four audio modes. The first three modes were perceptual interfaces and did not require cognitive mediation on the part of the user. The fourth mode was a non-perceptual mode where object descriptions were given via spatial language using clockface angles. After learning the targets through the four modes, the participants spatially updated the position of the targets and localized them by walking to each of them from two indirect waypoints. The results also indicate hand motion triggered mode to be better than the head motion triggered mode and comparable to auditory snapshot. In the second experiment, blindfolded participants learned target object arrays with two spatial audio modes and a visual mode. In the first mode, head tracking was enabled, whereas in the second mode hand tracking was enabled. In the third mode, serving as a control, the participants were allowed to learn the targets visually. We again compared spatial updating performance with these modes and found no significant performance differences between modes. These results indicate that we can develop 3D audio interfaces on sensor rich off the shelf smartphone devices, without the need of expensive head tracking hardware. Finally, a third study, evaluated room layout learning performance by blindfolded participants with an android smartphone. Three perceptual and one non-perceptual mode were tested for cognitive map development. As expected the perceptual interfaces performed significantly better than the non-perceptual language based mode in an allocentric pointing judgment and in overall subjective rating. In sum, the perceptual interfaces led to better spatial learning performance and higher user ratings. Also there is no significant difference in a cognitive map developed through spatial audio based on tracking user’s head or hand. These results have important implications as they support development of accessible perceptually driven interfaces for smartphones

CDI-Type II: Collaborative Research: Cyber Enhancement of Spatial Cognition for the Visually Impaired

Wayfinding is an essential capability for any person who wishes to have an independent life-style. It requires successful execution of several tasks including navigation and object and place recognition, all of which necessitate accurate assessment of the surrounding environment. For a visually-impaired person these tasks may be exceedingly difficult to accomplish and there are risks associated with failure in any of these. Guide dogs and white canes are widely used for the purpose of navigation and environment sensing, respectively. The former, however, has costly and often prohibitive training requirements, while the latter can only provide cues about obstacles in one\u27s surroundings. Human performance on visual information dependent tasks can be improved by sensing which provides information and environmental cues, such as position, orientation, local geometry, object description, via the use of appropriate sensors and sensor fusion algorithms. Most work on wayfinding aids has focused on outdoor environments and has led to the development of speech-enabled GPS-based navigation systems that provide information describing streets, addresses and points of interest. In contrast, the limited technology that is available for indoor navigation requires significant modification to the building infrastructure, whose high cost has prevented its wide use. This proposal adopts a multi-faceted approach for solving the indoor navigation problem for people with limited vision. It leverages expertise from robotics, computer vision, and blind spatial cognition with behavioral studies on interface design to guide the discovery of information requirements and optimal delivery methods for an indoor navigation system. Designing perception and navigation algorithms, implemented on miniature-size commercially-available hardware, while explicitly considering the spatial cognition capabilities of the visually impaired, will lead to the development of indoor navigation systems that will assist blind people in their wayfinding tasks while facilitating cognitive-map development

Assistive Systems for the Visually Impaired Based on Image Processing

In this chapter, we proposed three assistive systems for visually impaired individuals based on image processing: Kinect cane system, Kinect goggle system, and light checking system. The Kinect cane system can detect obstacles of various sizes and also recognize objects such as seats. A visually impaired user is notified of the results of detection and recognition by means of vibration feedback. The Kinect goggle system is another type of wearable system, and can make user’s hands free. The light checking system is implemented as an application for a smartphone, and can tell a visually impaired user the ON/OFF states of room lights and elevator button lights. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed systems are effective in helping visually impaired individuals in everyday environments