Virtual AI Assistant for Person with Partial Vision Impairment

Abstract

Smartphones help us with almost every activity and task nowadays. The features and hardware of the phone can be leveraged to make apps for online payment, content consumption, and creation, accessibility, etc. These devices can also be used to help and assist visually challenged and guide them in their daily activities. As the visually challenged sometimes face difficulty in sensing the objects or humans in the surroundings, they require guidance or help in recognizing objects, human faces, reading text, and other activities. Hence, this Android application has been proposed to help and assist people with partial vision impairment. The application will make use of technologies like face detection, object and text recognition, barcode scanner, and a basic voice-based chatbot which can be used to execute basic commands implemented through Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning. The application will be able to detect the number of faces, recognize the object in the camera frame of the application, read out the text from newspapers, documents, etc, and open the link detected from the barcode, all given as output to the user in the form of voice.

Leveraging education through artificial intelligence virtual assistance: A case study of visually impaired learners

“…Face identification, object and text recognition, a barcode scanner, and a basic voice-based chatbot will all be used in the app. It can count the number of people in a room, read text from newspapers and documents, and open a link found in a barcode (Raghavan et al, 2021). Assistive technology for the blind and visually handicapped is gaining popularity.…”