Investigating design issues of context-aware mobile guides for people with visual impairments

While mobile wayfinding systems for visually impaired people offer huge potential, most insufficiently address the differences between visual impairments and contextual environments, and offer very little context-awareness - usability issues of which are vital in supporting independent mobility. Participants experiencing a loss of central vision, loss of peripheral vision, and total vision loss made up three groups. Our multidisciplinary model of context was used to design a user study, which involved asking participants to walk to pre-determined outdoor and indoor landmarks. Significant differences were found between groups relating to information requirements, and the environmental cues encoded and used to orientate and navigate. The study also found differences between indoor and outdoor contexts. It was concluded that what is meaningful to one form of visual impairment is incidental to another. These issues need to be captured and accounted for if wayfinding systems are to be usable

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

A technological innovation to safely aid in the spatial orientation of blind people in a complex urban environment

In the broader context of smart cities, to ensure mobility of people regardless of their physical or sensory condition becomes a complex and difficult challenge to be treated. All papers referenced in this work are presented as a solution to equip the blind people with devices and sensors (controlled by a computational system) with the ability to capture environmental structure data and somehow describe it to the understanding of the blind people. Our work explores another side of this problem: how the environment can transmit data about itself to safely-help guide blind orientation in this environment? In other words, from our view, the environment must report data on its structure as opposed to make the blind person try to extract these data from this environment. So, here we propose to use an intelligent semaphore system (traffic lights) to communicate with a mobile system carried by the blind person and by the coherent processing of the signals sent and received between the mobile device and the intelligent semaphore, to conduct the blind in the streets crossing the crosswalk safely

A wearable system for mobility improvement of visually impaired people

Degradation of the visual system can lead to a dramatic reduction of mobility by limiting a person to his sense of touch and hearing. This paper presents the development of an obstacle detection system for visually impaired people. While moving in his environment the user is alerted to close obstacles in range. The system we propose detects an obstacle surrounding the user by using a multi-sonar system and sending appropriate vibrotactile feedback. The system aims at increasing the mobility of visually impaired people by offering new sensing abilitie

Internet of Things (IoT) enabled smart navigation aid for visually impaired

Blindness is a disorder in which a person's ocular vision is lost. Mobility and self-reliability have been a primary concern for visually disabled and blind people. Internet of Things (IoT) enabled Smart Navigation Aid, a smart Electronic Traveling Aid (ETA), is proposed in this paper. This smart guiding ETA improves the lives of blind people since it is enabled with IoT based sensing and is designed to help visually disabled/impaired people walk and navigate freely in both close and open areas. The proposed prototype provides highly powerful, accurate, quick responding, lightweight, low power consumption, and cost-effective solution that would enhance the lives of the visually impaired people. Within a 1m radius, ultrasonic sensors were used to locate the barrier and potholes. The location was shared with the cloud using GPS and an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module. The stick was also installed with an emergency button, which will call on the mobile when pressed. The stick can also detect wet surfaces with the help of a water sensor. The entire system was built on the Arduino UNO 3 platform. Thus, the proposed prototype is an excellent example of how IoT enabled sensing could aid in the day-to-day lives of the visually impaired people and allowing them the freedom to navigate independentl