GPS NAVIGATOR FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED

The objective of this study is the development of navigation system which supports activities of the visually impaired without help of others. This system navigates a visually impaired person by using information about GPS (Global Positioning system). In this navigation system, after setting the destination, position of user is obtained by GPS and a visually impaired user is guided along the predefined route

Investigating context-aware clues to assist navigation for visually impaired people

It is estimated that 7.4 million people in Europe are visually impaired [1]. Limitations of traditional mobility aids (i.e. white canes and guide dogs) coupled with a proliferation of context-aware technologies (e.g. Electronic Travel Aids, Global Positioning Systems and Geographical Information Systems), have stimulated research and development into navigational systems for the visually impaired. However, current research appears very technology focused, which has led to an insufficient appreciation of Human Computer Interaction, in particular task/requirements analysis and notions of contextual interactions. The study reported here involved a smallscale investigation into how visually impaired people interact with their environmental context during micro-navigation (through immediate environment) and/or macro-navigation (through distant environment) on foot. The purpose was to demonstrate the heterogeneous nature of visually impaired people in interaction with their environmental context. Results from a previous study involving sighted participants were used for comparison. Results revealed that when describing a route, visually impaired people vary in their use of different types of navigation clues - both as a group, when compared with sighted participants, and as individuals. Usability implications and areas for further work are identified and discussed

Guardian - prayer aids for visually impaired, make your pray easier ....

Guardian device is prayer aid that designed for visually impaired or blind ppl, to perform prayer or other duties. It is because, nowadays there are many ppl that suffer from minor to variour serious vision disability which make diffeculties for those who are independance living. Most common vision problem is praying. Therefore, this device is designed to solve thoes problems. There are three function; Azan alert, Qiblat compass and electronic beards. The systems used are GPS which is well known about navigator and world clock. Moreover, digital counter systen eases you to count number of zikkrullah to be more precise and with no worry

IO Vision – an integrated system to support the visually impaired

Security questions are one of the techniques used to recover passwords. The main limitation of security questions is that users find strong answers difficult to remember. This leads users to trade-off security for the convenience of an improved memorability. Previous research found that increased fun and enjoyment can lead to an enhanced memorability, which provides a better learning experience. Hence, we empirically investigate whether a serious game has the potential of improving the memorability of strong answers to security questions. For our serious game, we adopted the popular “4 Pics 1 word” mobile game because of its use of pictures and cues, which psychology research found to be important to help with memorability. Our findings indicate that the proposed serious game could potentially improve the memorability of answers to security questions. This potential improvement in memorability, could eventually help reduce the trade-off between usability and security in fall-back authentication

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

Haptic System for Eyes Free and Hands Free Pedestrian Navigation

International audienceUntil now, Augmented Reality was mainly associated with visual augmentation which was often reduced to superimposing a virtual object on to a real world. We present in this document a vibro-tactile system called HaptiNav, which illustrates the concept of Haptic Augmented Reality. We use the haptic feedback method to send users information about their direction, thus enabling them to reach their destination. To do so, we use a turn by turn metaphor which consists of dividing the route into many reference points. In order to assess the performances of the HaptiNav system, we carry out an experimental study in which we compare it to both Google Maps Audio and Pocket Navigator systems. The results show that there is no significant difference between HaptiNav and Google Maps Audio in terms of performance, physical load and time. However, statistical analysis of the mental load, frustration and effort highlights the advantages of HaptiNav compared to two other systems. In the light of the results obtained, we present possible improvements for HaptiNav and describe its second prototype, at the end of this paper

Sonification of guidance data during road crossing for people with visual impairments or blindness

In the last years several solutions were proposed to support people with visual impairments or blindness during road crossing. These solutions focus on computer vision techniques for recognizing pedestrian crosswalks and computing their relative position from the user. Instead, this contribution addresses a different problem; the design of an auditory interface that can effectively guide the user during road crossing. Two original auditory guiding modes based on data sonification are presented and compared with a guiding mode based on speech messages. Experimental evaluation shows that there is no guiding mode that is best suited for all test subjects. The average time to align and cross is not significantly different among the three guiding modes, and test subjects distribute their preferences for the best guiding mode almost uniformly among the three solutions. From the experiments it also emerges that higher effort is necessary for decoding the sonified instructions if compared to the speech instructions, and that test subjects require frequent `hints' (in the form of speech messages). Despite this, more than 2/3 of test subjects prefer one of the two guiding modes based on sonification. There are two main reasons for this: firstly, with speech messages it is harder to hear the sound of the environment, and secondly sonified messages convey information about the "quantity" of the expected movement

Smartphone application for accessible navigation

Διπλωματική εργασία--Πανεπιστήμιο Μακεδονίας, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2018.The main aim of this study is to investigate how the modern smartphone technology can assist people with visual impairments in indoor navigation tasks. We use the free and open indoor navigation service Anyplace, to design an indoor guidance system that is accessible, inexpensive, simple and user-friendly to different user groups disregarding their disabilities. The Android application that Anyplace offers, was extended and modified to serve also the needs of visually impaired users. The presented system works well with the assistive applications that Android platform offers and provides various ways for interaction between the user and the system. The system is communicating with Anyplace server to inform the user about the information of the surrounding environment and guide him/her to the desired place in the building with accessible messages. The application can process, specific pre-defined user commands and location information from existing QR labels in the building. This thesis is focusing on assisting the impaired users on indoor navigation tasks, but not on replacing the assistive means that the visually impaired user is already using. (e.g. long cane, guide dog) Experimental results show the ability of the system to effectively communicate with the user and assist him/her in way-finding tasks in the building of the University of Macedonia