Methodology to Build a Wearable System for Assisting Blind People in Purposeful Navigation

Toro, Andrés Alejandro Díaz; Bastidas, Sixto Enrique Campaña; Bravo, Eduardo Francisco Caicedo

doi:10.1109/icict50521.2020.00039

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…The system estimated real-time ego motion and created a 2D probabilistic occupancy grid map to facilitate dynamic path planning and obstacle avoidance [23]. Diaz Toro et al built a vision-based wearable system with a stereo camera for floor segmentation, occupancy grid built, obstacle avoidance, object detection, and path planning [24]. The system operated at 11 FPS, effectively handling both the floor segmentation and the construction of a 2D occupancy grid [24].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intelligent Head-Mounted Obstacle Avoidance Wearable for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Xu,

Song,

Wang

2023

Sensors

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Individuals who are Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) take significant risks and dangers on obstacles, particularly when they are unaccompanied. We propose an intelligent head-mount device to assist BVI people with this challenge. The objective of this study is to develop a computationally efficient mechanism that can effectively detect obstacles in real time and provide warnings. The learned model aims to be both reliable and compact so that it can be integrated into a wearable device with a small size. Additionally, it should be capable of handling natural head turns, which can generally impact the accuracy of readings from the device’s sensors. Over thirty models with different hyper-parameters were explored and their key metrics were compared to identify the most suitable model that strikes a balance between accuracy and real-time performance. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of a highly efficient wearable device that can assist BVI individuals in avoiding obstacles with a high level of accuracy.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intelligent Head-Mounted Obstacle Avoidance Wearable for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Xu,

Song,

Wang

2023

Sensors

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“…It is used with obstacle detection to update the 2D grid traversability map, which is used to generate a safe route. Another indoor navigation system consists of a chest-worn high-resolution stereo RGB-D camera and a high-computation capacity embedded processor [ 80 ].…”

Section: Body-worn Devicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An overhead and ground-level obstacles detection system has three vibrators on the fingers to indicate near, middle and far distance obstacles. Other simple displays, frequently involving four vibrators, provide the travel direction and instruction to stop and scan, e.g., [ 54 , 80 ]. An RFID indoor navigation system has 14 vibrating motors on a belt to indicate distance [ 101 ], which seems over complicated.…”

Section: Responses To the Three Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wearable Travel Aids for Blind and Partially Sighted People: A Review with a Focus on Design Issues

Hersh

2022

Sensors

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The ability to travel (independently) is very important for participation in education, work, leisure activities, and all other aspects of modern life. Blind and partially sighted people experience a number of barriers to travel, including inaccessible information and environments, and consequently require support from technology or other people to overcome them. Despite the potential of advanced technologies and the development of electronic travel aids, the long cane and guide dog remains the most commonly used solutions. Wearable technologies are becoming increasingly popular. They have the particular advantage of keeping the hands free, thereby facilitating the use of a long cane, guide dog or another device at the same time. They also have the potential to change the ways in which users interact with the environment. The main contributions of this paper are surveying the current state-of-the-art of travel aids from a design perspective and investigating the following issues: (1) The important design issues in wearable travel aids and the extent to which they are taken into account in different devices; (2) The relationship, if any, between where and how travel aids are worn and their design, features and functions; (3) Limitations of existing devices, gaps in provision and future research directions, particularly with regard to meeting potential users’ needs.

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“…During this exploratory phase, we listened to the research priorities and concerns of DPOs and collected some examples of assistive devices that have focused on the priorities, needs, and concerns of PWDs in LMICs, but we also looked at relevant examples of low-cost technologies in high-income countries that will now be discussed individually. For instance, the Perception and Intelligent Systems (PSI) group (UNIVALLE-Colombia) developed a wearable navigation system for the blind adapted to the urban environment in Latin America, based on AI algorithms (Díaz et al, 2020) walkable spaces, obstacles, and objects of interest, such as doors, chairs, staircases, and computers, among others, and planning a path that allows the users to reach their target locations in a safe way (purposeful navigation). The navigation system was successfully tested with blind users in Cali, Colombia, who gave positive comments about its portability, navigation in indoor and outdoor en viron ments, and its ability to run locally (not in the cloud/external servers), which allowed it to work in places without high-quality internet access or GPS-denied environments.…”

Section: Shifting the Focus On The Development Of Assistive Devicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design Approaches for Creating Person-Centered, Context Sensitive, and Sustainable Assistive Technology with the Global South

Velarde¹,

Hurst²,

Chavarria³

et al. 2021

Accessible Technology and the Developing World

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The implementation of non-user-centered design is sometimes effective for traditionally mass-produced items; however, these methods do not take into account local needs, resources, and cultures, and the history of individual people and communities in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This neglect leads to “specialized” solutions based on a non-representative portion of high-income users, rather than the larger population of potential users, and results in devices that are alienated from the target community. In consequence, the resulting products do not work properly, nor do they have the intended impact. As an example, even if they do work at first, the implementation and maintenance effort and costs are usually so high that they rapidly fall into disuse. This chapter highlights examples of innovative practices of assistive technology based on users’ priorities, which are culturally appropriate and sustainable. The chapter also reviews the shortfalls of well-intentioned “solutions” that fail when they are implemented in the intended population due to the lack of a proper understanding of local context.

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Methodology to Build a Wearable System for Assisting Blind People in Purposeful Navigation

Cited by 8 publications

References 16 publications

Intelligent Head-Mounted Obstacle Avoidance Wearable for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Intelligent Head-Mounted Obstacle Avoidance Wearable for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Wearable Travel Aids for Blind and Partially Sighted People: A Review with a Focus on Design Issues

Design Approaches for Creating Person-Centered, Context Sensitive, and Sustainable Assistive Technology with the Global South

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