Proposal and Evaluation of a Walking Support System for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

Visually impaired people can possibly feel stress and anxiety while walking at pedestrian crossing and vehicle doorway at train stations. We propose a walking assistance system in order to (1) provide accurate information (existence and the type of braille blocks) via a cane and (2) inform them the place's information via the cane while they are at the places where they can possibly feel stress and anxiety. In contrast to the previous works of using electronic devices (RFID (Radio Frequency IDentifier) tags), we take an approach of using chemical substance (phosphors) as guiding object. In our elementary experiments, we made samples with 5% of phosphor powder by using resin material and could observe the existence of it. This result indicates the potential feasibility of our system.