Assisting the Visually Impaired: Obstacle Detection and Warning System by Acoustic Feedback

Rodríguez, A. Fernández; Yebes, J. Javier; Alcantarilla, Pablo F.; Bergasa, Luis M.; Almazán, Javier; Andrés, F. Llorente de

doi:10.3390/s121217476

Cited by 141 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…[7] make use of data obtained from a stereo pair. A polar grid that delimits the region in which ob stacles can occur was defined and estimated empirically to 4.5 meters.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obstacle detection for pedestrians with a visual impairment based on 3D imaging

Vlaminck

Jovanov

Hese

et al. 2013

2013 International Conference on 3D Imaging

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According to the World Health Organisation, 285 million peo ple live with a visual impairment. Despite the fact that many efforts have been made recently, there is still no computer guided system that is reliable, robust and practical enough to help these people to increase their mobility. Motivated by this shortcoming, we propose a novel obstacle detection sys tem to assist the visually impaired. This work mainly focuses on indoor environments and performs classification of typical obstacles that emerge in these situations, using a 3D sensor. A total of four classes of obstacles are considered: walls, doors, stairs and a residual class (which covers loose obstacles and bumpy parts on the floor). The proposed system is very re liable in terms of the detection accuracy. In a realistic ex periment, stairs are detected with 100% true positive rate and 8.6% false positive rate, while doors are detected with 86.4% true positive rate and 0% false positive rate.

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“…The former methods mostly use the concept of an occupancy grid, which is a quantization of the space in front of the user into a number of bins. In [10], the authors define a polar grid in front of the user which is subsequently projected on the ground plane and the bins of the grid are filled with 3D points that are located within the bounds of each bin. Obstacles are then defined as cells containing more then a predefined number of points.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indoor assistance for visually impaired people using a RGB-D camera

Vlaminck

Hiep

Hoang

et al. 2016

2016 IEEE Southwest Symposium on Image Analysis and Interpretation (SSIAI)

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Abstract-In this paper a navigational aid for visually impaired people is presented. The system uses a RGB-D camera to perceive the environment and implements self-localization, obstacle detection and obstacle classification. The novelty of this work is threefold. First, self-localization is performed by means of a novel camera tracking approach that uses both depth and color information. Second, to provide the user with semantic information, obstacles are classified as walls, doors, steps and a residual class that covers isolated objects and bumpy parts on the floor. Third, in order to guarantee real time performance, the system is accelerated by offloading parallel operations to the GPU. Experiments demonstrate that the whole system is running at 9 Hz.

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“…Leung and Medioni [9] propose an odometry system using stereo images and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to reduce drift errors. Papers [11][12][13] describe methods focused on obstacle detection and safe path estimation, that employ a stereo pair to improve estimation accuracy. However, stereo cameras are currently quite expensive, bulky and showy, as compared to a standard mobile device.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smartphone-Based Obstacle Detection for the Visually Impaired

Caldini

Fanfani

Colombo

2015

Image Analysis and Processing — ICIAP 2015

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Abstract.One of the main problems that visually impaired people have to deal with is moving autonomously in an unknown environment. Currently, the most used autonomous walking aid is still the white can. Though in the last few years more technological devices have been introduced, referred to as electronic travel aids (ETAs). In this paper, we present a novel ETA based on computer vision. Exploiting the hardware and software facilities of a standard smartphone, our system is able to extract a 3D representation of the scene and detect possible obstacles. To achieve such a result, images are captured by the smartphone camera and processed with a modified Structure from Motion algorithm that takes as input also information from the built-in gyroscope. Then the system estimates the ground-plane and labels as obstacles all the structures above it. Results on indoor and outdoor test sequences show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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“…In this study the ultrasonic sensor is used to detect the obstacles [19,20,21,22] and GPS is employed for positioning and navigation in the wayfinding process. This type of ultrasonic sensor measures the interval between sending waves and receiving the echo signals with respect to the speed of sound in the environment to estimate the distance to the obstacles.…”

Section: System Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Development of a Mobile Sensor Based the Blind Assistance Wayfinding System

Barati

Delavar

2015

Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.

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ABSTRACT:The blind and visually impaired people are facing a number of challenges in their daily life. One of the major challenges is finding their way both indoor and outdoor. For this reason, routing and navigation independently, especially in urban areas are important for the blind. Most of the blind undertake route finding and navigation with the help of a guide. In addition, other tools such as a cane, guide dog or electronic aids are used by the blind. However, in some cases these aids are not efficient enough in a wayfinding around obstacles and dangerous areas for the blind. As a result, the need to develop effective methods as decision support using a non-visual media is leading to improve quality of life for the blind through their increased mobility and independence. In this study, we designed and implemented an outdoor mobile sensor-based wayfinding system for the blind. The objectives of this study are to guide the blind for the obstacle recognition and the design and implementation of a wayfinding and navigation mobile sensor system for them.In this study an ultrasonic sensor is used to detect obstacles and GPS is employed for positioning and navigation in the wayfinding. This type of ultrasonic sensor measures the interval between sending waves and receiving the echo signals with respect to the speed of sound in the environment to estimate the distance to the obstacles. In this study the coordinates and characteristics of all the obstacles in the study area are already stored in a GIS database. All of these obstacles were labeled on the map. The ultrasonic sensor designed and constructed in this study has the ability to detect the obstacles in a distance of 2cm to 400cm. The implementation and the results obtained from the interview of a number of blind persons who employed the sensor verified that the designed mobile sensor system for wayfinding was very satisfactory.

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“…An electronic travel assistance device is a device that converts and reports information about the surrounding environment to the user. Studies [3][4][5] have been conducted on the use of such devices to detect and report on dangerous obstacles, and ultrasound and stereo cameras have been used to detect obstacles. Recently, research on the system supporting walking in indoor spaces [6][7][8] has been actively conducted, and Yang [6] verified the effectiveness of interface of tactile maps focusing on the tactilegram.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%