Assisting Visually Impaired People in the Public Transport System through RF-Communication and Embedded Systems †

Abstract

For a significant number of people with visual impairments, public transport plays an important role in productivity, community participation, and independence, since it may be the only feasible mobility option to participate in their education, work, medical care, food, and to attend many other places in their community. To use the public bus system safely, effectively, and autonomously, these people need to collect information about their physical environment and visible information at stops and terminals, such as timetables, routes, etc. Unfortunately, most people who are blind or visually impaired experience difficulties in getting on the right bus or getting off at the right destination. These situations usually force them to depend on other people that assist them in activities close to their homes, or settle for simpler jobs, or simply stay at home. Therefore, our efforts should aim to develop a system where technology is used to empower people with visual disabilities, allowing them to navigate autonomously in the public transport system. This paper presents a system based on radio frequency (RF) communication proposed within the framework of the MOVIDIS (Mobility for Visually Disabled People) research project (funded by the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation-SENACYT, under Grants No. 109-2015-4-FID14-073 and No. 99-2018-4-FID17-031), which provides an alternative to assist people with visual disabilities with their mobility in the public transport system. The various modules of this system communicate with each other by means of radio frequency and allow users to interact with buses and their respective stops. The first experimental results show that RF communication represents a viable option to help people with visual disabilities in public transport services.

Multiple Utility Analyses for Sustainable Public Transport Planning and Management: Evidence from GPS-Equipped Taxi Data in Haikou

“…Formula (19) can be converted into Formula (20), and the relationship between Formulas (1) and (20) can be presented by Formula 21:…”

“…[19] proposed a method based on running timetables and position coordinates to analyze the vulnerabilities and critical areas of PT systems in China and indicated that economic development and population density are essential to PT system design. Saez et al (2019) [20] proposed an assistance system based on radio frequency communication technologies for people with visual disabilities to facilitate their mobility in PT systems. Perera et al (2020) [21] designed a lifecycle thinking-based multi-period PT infrastructure-planning framework to develop sustainable electric vehicles.…”

A Systematic Review of Urban Navigation Systems for Visually Impaired People

“…Route selection consists of pedestrian routing and public transportation as sub-tasks (read Section 7.4 ). Public transportation as part of journey planning does not appear in the literature [ 32 , 78 , 79 ] therefore, the focus of this section is on pedestrian routing. This problem of route selection problem is a significant task for navigation of vehicles [ 123 ] or pedestrians with and without disabilities [ 122 ].…”

“…Each step on this task merits consideration in any study to determine the needs of BVIP across multiple contexts. For instance, ’ Finding the correct service’ step at the bus stop is about catching the right bus for the destination [ 32 , 66 , 78 , 79 ] when it arrive at a bus stop. In contrast, this step is more complicated in the airport [ 159 ] or large scale train station [ 114 ].…”

Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence—UCAmI

“…In the first paper, “Assisting Visually Impaired People in the Public Transport System through RF-Communication and Embedded Systems” [3], a new approach is described to provide autonomous mobility in the public transport system to visually impaired persons by means of radio frequency communication and embedded systems. The main advantages of this new proposal are that it is low cost, user-friendly, modular, and requires no audio cues, which make it a good alternative to the current approaches.…”