Design of a system to support the mobility of visually impaired people

The autonomous mobility for visually impaired people has been an issue in where several researchers have contributed with proposals in order to solve it. However, there is a lot of work to carry out in the cities in where this kind of technology has been applied, but also in other cities or town where this or other technology not has arrived yet. In this work two different ICT-based systems have been described, which provide helps in the mobility of visually impaired people in the public transport in Panama. One of them consists of the development of new applications for Android-based smartphones, and the second system is based on the development of RF modules into the ISM radio band. These prototypes are used by the visually impaired people and by the bus driver, and one of them is installed at the bus stop

Creating a transportation app for visually impaired people

Client for this thesis was Bernmobil. Bernmobil provides public transportation services in the Bern area by busses and trams. The idea for this assignment came from the interest to provide services for a specific target group, visually impaired people. The goal of this thesis was to develop a concept of an assistive mobile application for visually impaired users to help them use public transportation by themselves. Literature research was used as the research method, which was based on the previous projects and reports on this field, including guidelines of the assistive application development and documentations about existing public transportation applications for visually impaired. The analysis and research for this project started by defining the problems, which visually impaired face when using public transportation. From a list of existing problems, four were picked which were found to be the most relevant. Guidelines for assistive application development define what is to be taken into consideration when developing an application for visually impaired users. Research of existing applications were used to define which features this kind of application includes, where they are used, and how the application for the visually impaired works. The conceptual design and interface of this application was based on the literature research. The four major features of the conceptual application (planning the route, information about arriving vehicle, information while on board and information about abnormalities on the route) solve the problems defined by the literature research. Interaction between user and the application works by screen reader and touch-based gestures. The interface is designed to be simple, only including features that are relevant and necessary. As a conclusion, companies and developers have made big efforts to design assistive applications for visually impaired. There is a lot of research concerning this matter on the general level. On the field of public transportation, there is still work to do. There are some public transportation applications that work locally in different parts of the world. World-wide there are only a few public transportation applications but they are not designed specifically for visually impaired users. So there is a gap to fill for Bernmobil to provide more accessible public transportation for their customers

Travelling with a Guide Dog: Experiences of People with Vision Impairment

There is considerable research on people with vision impairment (PwVI) in the transport, travel and tourism sectors, which highlights the significance of real-time information and consistency in services to accessibility. Based on interviews with guide dog owners in the United Kingdom, this paper contributes an additional dimension to our understanding of transport accessibility for PwVI by focusing specifically on guide dog owners’ experiences in the travel and tourism sector. A guide dog is more than a mobility tool, but a human–dog partnership that improves the quality of life for PwVI; however, it also introduces constraints related to the dog’s welfare and safety. Further, lack of understanding of guide dog owners’ rights to reasonable accommodation leads to discrimination through service refusals and challenges to service access. This paper concludes that the limited and inconsistent public knowledge of disability diversity has serious ramifications for transport accessibility and suggests specific industry and legislative interventions in response.publishedVersio

The Journey Experience of Visually Impaired People on Public Transport in London

The use of public transport is critical for Visually Impaired People (VIP) to be independent and have access to out-of-home activities. Despite government policies promoting accessible transport for everyone, the needs of VIP are not well addressed, and journeys can be very difficult to negotiate. Journey requirements can often differ from those of other categories of people on the disability spectrum. Therefore, the aim of this research is to evaluate the journey experience of VIP using public transport. Semi-structured interviews conducted in London are used. The results show that limited access to information, inconsistencies in infrastructure and poor availability of staff assistance are the major concerns. Concessionary travel, on the other hand, encourages VIP to make more trips and hence has a positive effect on well-being. The findings suggest that more specific policies should be introduced to cater to the special needs of particular disabilities rather than generalising the types of aids available. It is also concluded that the journey experience of VIP is closely related to an individual’s independence and hence inclusion in society

A Spot Reminder System for the Visually Impaired Based on a Smartphone Camera

The present paper proposes a smartphone-camera-based system to assist visually impaired users in recalling their memories related to important locations, called spots, that they visited. The memories are recorded as voice memos, which can be played back when the users return to the spots. Spot-to-spot correspondence is determined by image matching based on the scale invariant feature transform. The main contribution of the proposed system is to allow visually impaired users to associate arbitrary voice memos with arbitrary spots. The users do not need any special devices or systems except smartphones and do not need to remember the spots where the voice memos were recorded. In addition, the proposed system can identify spots in environments that are inaccessible to the global positioning system. The proposed system has been evaluated by two experiments: image matching tests and a user study. The experimental results suggested the effectiveness of the system to help visually impaired individuals, including blind individuals, recall information about regularly-visited spots

Travelling with a Guide Dog: Experiences of People with Vision Impairment

There is considerable research on people with vision impairment (PwVI) in the transport, travel and tourism sectors, which highlights the significance of real-time information and consistency in services to accessibility. Based on interviews with guide dog owners in the United Kingdom, this paper contributes an additional dimension to our understanding of transport accessibility for PwVI by focusing specifically on guide dog owners’ experiences in the travel and tourism sector. A guide dog is more than a mobility tool, but a human–dog partnership that improves the quality of life for PwVI; however, it also introduces constraints related to the dog’s welfare and safety. Further, lack of understanding of guide dog owners’ rights to reasonable accommodation leads to discrimination through service refusals and challenges to service access. This paper concludes that the limited and inconsistent public knowledge of disability diversity has serious ramifications for transport accessibility and suggests specific industry and legislative interventions in response

Research of the Possible Appliance of Assistive Technologies for Informing Users in a Public Transport System

U pomoćnu ili asistivnu tehnologiju ubraja se sva oprema, uređaji i sustavi koji pomažu učiniti okruženje određenim skupinama korisnika, kao što su slijepe i slabovidne osobe, pristupačnijim. Primjer takve pomoćne tehnologije može biti sustav, temeljen na informacijsko-komunikacijskoj tehnologiji, koji služi informiranju navedene skupine korisnika u javnom gradskom prijevozu. U diplomskom radu predložen je sustav za informiranje slijepih i slabovidnih korisnika temeljen na bluetooth informacijsko-komunikacijskoj tehnologiji. Korisnik je opremljen pametnim mobilnim terminalnim uređajem, s kojeg prima informacije o lokaciji (ovisno o stajalištu) i dolasku vozila (linija i smjer kretanja vozila). Informiranje korisnika odvija se zvučnim putem (pretvorba teksta u govor).Assistive or auxiliary technology includes all equipment, devices and systems which help certain user groups, such as blind and visually impaired people accommodating easily in the environment around them. An example of such assistive technology can be a system, based on information and communication technology, which is used to inform a group of users in the public transport. The thesis proposes a system for informing the blind and visually impaired people based on Bluetooth to/and ICT technology. The user is equipped with a smart mobile terminal device, from which he receives the location information (depending on his position) and the arrival of the (public transport) vehicle (line and direction of the vehicle).The user is informed by sound (text to speech)

Desarrollo de un lazarillo robótico que guie a una persona dentro de un lugar específico

Uno de los principales aspectos que genera dificultades en una persona en condición de discapacidad visual es la movilidad, puesto que la mayoría de los casos los lugares públicos por lo general no presentan una estructura idónea y no cumplen con las características de diseño competente que facilite las condiciones de desplazamiento e interacción para esta población. Con el paso de los años se han desarrollado diferentes mecanismos que han permitido mitigar las barreras que se presentan al momento de movilizarse para persona con discapacidad visual: Bastones, chalecos, (Global Positioning System) GPS, dispositivos capaces de detectar objetos por medio de ultrasonido o perros lazarillos. Sin duda alguna, este último ha representado una de las mejores opciones para la guía de personas invidentes, aunque existen limitaciones frente al acceso de estos lazarillos en ciertos lugares como las entidades prestadoras de servicios de salud ya que estos poseen protocolos de seguridad con el paciente en lo referente a salubridad y epidemiologia adicionalmente la mayoría de la población con discapacidad visual suele tener un índice socio económico bajo por lo que es casi imposible para ellos mantener un perro. Ante lo cual surge la idea de desarrollar un prototipo de lazarillo robótico que permita guiar a una persona con condición de discapacidad visual inicialmente a través de un lugar específico donde la inversión la realiza el lugar y no el usuario. En el desarrollo del presente trabajo se muestra cada una de las etapas metodológicas efectuadas para llevar a cabo la construcción del asistente robótico, asimismo se exponen las diferentes modificaciones y adecuaciones de la estructura mecánica y los bloques electrónicos que permitieron el dinamismo al momento de guiar al paciente y posteriormente se registran los XVI resultados obtenidos estadísticamente en la realización de cada una de las pruebas, representando el funcionamiento adecuado del prototipo.Resumen XV Introducción Planteamiento del Problema Descripción del problema Formulación del problema Objetivos Objetivo general Objetivos específicos Justificación Delimitación Antecedentes Chaleco Bastón Lazarillo robótico Trekker Breeze DAO Dispositivo para la alerta de obstáculos Marco teórico Anatomía del ojo Sistema lagrimal IX Esclerótica Vítreo y retina Úvea Músculos extraoculares Conjuntiva Macula Nervio óptico Pupila Parpados Cristalino Cornea Patologías Las cataratas El glaucoma La degeneración macular Tracoma Oncocercosis Las ametropías Retinopatía diabética (RD) X Alteraciones de refracción Alteraciones corneales Patologías congénitas del iris Alteraciones del color Herramientas Bastón Blanco Perro Lazarillo Fundamentación Electrónica Tarjeta desarrollo arduino Bluetooth Servomotor Comunicación I2C Puente H Baterías lipo Marco legal Metodología Desarrollo Mecánico 611 Extremidades Desarrollo electrónico XI Programación Lenguaje Análisis de funciones Descripción Resultados Peso final prototipo Comunicación interna Asignación de funciones Implementación marcha y giros Baterías App para usuario invidente App administrativa para control remoto Arnés Rutas Presupuesto del prototipo Conclusiones ReferenciasPregradoIngeniero en BiomédicaIngeniería Biomédic

視覚障害者のバス利用支援のための画像処理を用いたカメラ視点識別に関する研究

The bus identification using smartphone camera is one useful application for blind people who travel independently in daily life. Although, many existing researches have focused on the bus identification by using image processing, those researches did not concern the viewpoint of image before the oncoming bus appear in the image. This research proposes the definition and classification of suitable viewpoint of bus-waiting for aiding blind people, which is proposed into three conditions as following: 1) non-congested traffic; 2) congested traffic; and 3) obstacles detection along the road. The first condition of non-congested traffic classified the viewpoint using the road area consideration, which this research applied the Rotational Invariant of Uniform of Local Binary Pattern technique for extracting the road area, and the Back-propagation of Artificial Neural Network for the viewpoint classification. The second condition is congested traffic, which appears a huge number of car in the image. The distribution of car in the image was calculated by many features, which the optimized results showed that seventeen selected features and Random Forest classifier provided the high performance. For third condition, the obstacles along the road will be consideration in case of non-congested traffic. This research combined many existing techniques of image processing to detect the obstacles along the road, which consisted of two main processes: 1) obstacle’s location detection and 2) obstacle’s height estimation. The proposed detected technique can implement in the daylight condition with high performance. According to experimental results, the high performance have shown by 98.56%, 86.00% for non-congested and congested traffics, respectively. Moreover, the performance of obstacles position detection and height estimation were shown by 91.20%, 86.00%, respectively. Based on these results, these are feasible to apply for viewpoint classification in order to assist blind people, who are independently waiting for the bus.九州工業大学博士学位論文 学位記番号:生工博甲第356号 学位授与年月日:令和元年9月20日1. Introduction|2. Previous Studies|3. Suitable Viewpoint Definition of Waiting for the Bus|4. Classification of Viewpoints while Waiting for the Bus in Situation of Non-Congested Traffic|5. Classification of Viewpoints while Waiting for the Bus in Situation of Congested Traffic|6. Obstacle Detection along the Road|7 Conclusions and Future Work九州工業大学令和元年

Dispositivo que auxilia pessoas com deficiência visual a utilizar o transporte público

O presente Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso, em Design de Produto da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, tem como objetivo desenvolver o projeto “Dispositivo que Auxilie Pessoas com Deficiência Visual a Utilizar o Transporte Público”, visando assim, conceber um produto adjacente às paradas de ônibus, oferecendo autonomia para pessoas com deficiencias visuais ao utilizar o transporte público oferecido pela cidade de Porto Alegre. A primeira metade deste trabalho compreende as etapas de proposta, pesquisa e planejamento do projeto, nas quais são apresentados os objetivos pretendidos, metodologia utilizada, fundamentação teórica, análise de similares, ainda elencam-se as necessidades e requisitos dos usuarios, os requisitos de projeto e o conceito do produto. Já a segunda metade deste trabalho, consiste nas etapas de projeto conceitual, comunicação e detalhamento do projeto, que englobam a geração de alternativas, desenvolvimento, modelagem por meio de software 3D e apresentação do produto final por meio de desenhos técnicos, renders digitais, materiais e métodos de fabricação e, por fim, confecção de um protótipo.The present course graduation project, in design of product of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, aims to develop the project "Device that Helps People with Visual Disability to Use Public Transport", aiming to design a product adjacent to bus stops, offering autonomy for people with visual deficiencies when using the public transportation offered by Porto Alegre city. The first half of this work comprises the stages of proposal, research and project planning, which shows the intended objectives, methodology, theoretical foundation, similar analysis, the needs and requirements of the users, the design requirements and the concept of the product are still listed. The second half of this work, consists in the steps of conceptual design, communication and detailing of the project, which include the generation of alternatives, development, 3D modeling by software and the presentation of the final product by means of technical drawings, digital renders, materials and methods of manufacture and, finally, making a prototype