INSPEX: Optimize Range Sensors for Environment Perception as a Portable System

Abstract

Environment perception is crucial for the safe navigation of vehicles and robots to detect obstacles in their surroundings. It is also of paramount interest for navigation of human beings in reduced visibility conditions. Obstacle avoidance systems typically combine multiple sensing technologies (i.e., LiDAR, radar, ultrasound and visual) to detect various types of obstacles under different lighting and weather conditions, with the drawbacks of a given technology being offset by others. These systems require powerful computational capability to fuse the mass of data, which limits their use to high-end vehicles and robots. INSPEX delivers a low-power, small-size and lightweight environment perception system that is compatible with portable and/or wearable applications. This requires miniaturizing and optimizing existing range sensors of different technologies to meet the user’s requirements in terms of obstacle detection capabilities. These sensors consist of a LiDAR, a time-of-flight sensor, an ultrasound and an ultra-wideband radar with measurement ranges respectively of 10 m, 4 m, 2 m and 10 m. Integration of a data fusion technique is also required to build a model of the user’s surroundings and provide feedback about the localization of harmful obstacles. As primary demonstrator, the INSPEX device will be fixed on a white cane.

A Systematic Review of Wearable Devices for Orientation and Mobility of Adults With Visual Impairment and Blindness

“…Similar to autonomous vehicles, ETAs use a set of sensing -e.g., ultrasonic, infrared, radio frequency identification (RFID), and global positioning systems (GPS) -and visual technologies -e.g., stereo and RGB-D cameras -to perceive the environment, detect objects, and process the information [11], [13]- [15]. This process must be executed in real-time, under diverse and unknown environmental conditions, and be safe to the users [16].…”

“…There are, however, a few differences between both systems. Autonomous vehicles systems are often large in size and require high power consumption [14], [15]. Furthermore, in fully autonomous vehicles, no human driver is involved in controlling the vehicle [17], whereas in navigation aids there should always be communication with the user through an interface, alerting them about near obstacles and impending danger in a timely manner and suggesting a course of action [16].…”

Haptic Feedback to Detect Obstacles in Multiple Regions for Visually Impaired and Blind People

“…Although a sensor can be attached to a white cane to detect head-level obstructions, only binary data, i.e., an obstacle existing/not existing around the sensor, can be obtained without any location data. (15) Hence, to overcome the limitations of existing devices, we implemented a region-based single sensor for obstacle detection, which provides more information to the user. A haptic feedback mechanism was developed for the sensor that provided one motor for each of the different regions of interest around the user.…”

“…The ground levels are covered by the white cane, while the upper levels correspond to regions where there may be suspended obstacles to the side of the user. (15) The left and right regions for the torso and ground levels allow the user to react to obstacles on one side by moving in the opposite direction. The region setup within the depth frame is shown in Fig.…”

Formal methods by stealth: The INSPEX experience

“…The INSPEX Project [3][4][5][6][7] aimed to leverage these possibilities to create devices at wearable scale, in order that they could assist humans, such as visually impaired or blind (VIB) persons-many other use cases besides VIB can be imagined too. Like the bulkier vehicle systems, the INSPEX technology relies on a family of sensors, and making the best use of these significantly increases the complexity of the system compared with existing single sensor VIB assistive equipment.…”