Obstacle detection by the Kinect cane system for the visually impaired

Orita, Kazunori; Takizawa, Hotaka; Aoyagi, Mayumi; Ezaki, Nobuo; Mizuno, Shinji

doi:10.1109/sii.2013.6776667

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Orita et al [ 12 ] implemented a device that augments the white cane used by visually impaired people with a Microsoft Kinect camera connected to a laptop and uninterruptible power supply in a backpack. Information about the lack of obstacles was communicated to the user through vibration feedback.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Smart Walker for People with Both Visual and Mobility Impairment

Mostofa

Feltner

Fullin

et al. 2021

Sensors

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In recent years, significant work has been done in technological enhancements for mobility aids (smart walkers). However, most of this work does not cover the millions of people who have both mobility and visual impairments. In this paper, we design and study four different configurations of smart walkers that are specifically targeted to the needs of this population. We investigated different sensing technologies (ultrasound-based, infrared depth cameras and RGB cameras with advanced computer vision processing), software configurations, and user interface modalities (haptic and audio signal based). Our experiments show that there are several engineering choices that can be used in the design of such assistive devices. Furthermore, we found that a holistic evaluation of the end-to-end performance of the systems is necessary, as the quality of the user interface often has a larger impact on the overall performance than increases in the sensing accuracy beyond a certain point.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Smart Walker for People with Both Visual and Mobility Impairment

Mostofa

Feltner

Fullin

et al. 2021

Sensors

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“…The Kinect cane system can detect obstacles which would prevent a visually impaired user to walk safely [45]. We provide two detection methods of small and large obstacles considering image and depth data were obtained by the Kinect sensor.…”

Section: Obstacle Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Obstacle detection is one of the representative research themes. Many research groups have proposed obstacle detection systems based on laser sensors [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], single charge-coupled devices cameras [12][13][14][15][16], ultrasonic sensors [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], stereoscopic cameras [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41], or RGB-D cameras [42][43][44][45][46]. These assistive systems are built on the basis of the concept of the electronic travel aid (ETA) [47,48], which aims to assist visually impaired users in walking while avoiding obstacles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assistive Systems for the Visually Impaired Based on Image Processing

Takizawa¹,

Aoyagi²

2018

Causes and Coping With Visual Impairment and Blindness

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In this chapter, we proposed three assistive systems for visually impaired individuals based on image processing: Kinect cane system, Kinect goggle system, and light checking system. The Kinect cane system can detect obstacles of various sizes and also recognize objects such as seats. A visually impaired user is notified of the results of detection and recognition by means of vibration feedback. The Kinect goggle system is another type of wearable system, and can make user's hands free. The light checking system is implemented as an application for a smartphone, and can tell a visually impaired user the ON/OFF states of room lights and elevator button lights. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed systems are effective in helping visually impaired individuals in everyday environments.

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“…For instance, it poses challenges to visually impaired people to navigate through real-world obstacles because they can't perceive their surroundings quite well. Modern solutions for navigational assistance have been making progressive improvement with the increased popularity of RGB-D sensors [2,3,4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

IR stereo RealSense: Decreasing minimum range of navigational assistance for visually impaired individuals

Yang

Wang

Zhao

et al. 2017

AIS

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Introduction of RGB-D sensors is a revolutionary force that offers a portable, versatile and cost-effective solution of navigational assistance for the visually impaired. RGB-D sensors on the market such as Microsoft Kinect, Asus Xtion and Intel RealSense are mature products, but all have a minimum detecting distance of about 800mm. This results in the loss of depth information and the omission of short-range obstacles, posing a significant risk on navigation. This paper puts forward a simple and effective approach to reduce the minimum range that enhances the reliability and safety of navigational assistance. Over-dense regions of IR speckles in two IR images are exploited as a stereo pair to generate short-range depth, as well as fusion of original depth image and RGB image to eliminate misjudgment. Besides, a seeded growing algorithm of obstacle detection with extended depth information is presented. Finally, the minimum range of Intel RealSense R200 is decreased by approximately 75%, from 650mm to 165mm. Experiment results show capacity of detecting obstacles from 165mm to more than 5000mm and improved performance of navigational assistance with expansion of detection range. The presented approach proves to be of qualified accuracy and speed for guiding the visually impaired.

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Obstacle detection by the Kinect cane system for the visually impaired

Cited by 11 publications

References 5 publications

A Smart Walker for People with Both Visual and Mobility Impairment

A Smart Walker for People with Both Visual and Mobility Impairment

Assistive Systems for the Visually Impaired Based on Image Processing

IR stereo RealSense: Decreasing minimum range of navigational assistance for visually impaired individuals

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