An integrated wireless indoor navigation system for visually impaired (original) (raw)

Real Time Indoor Navigation System For Visually Impaired

International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology, 2019

Indoor Navigation system is gaining lot of importance these days. It is particularly important to locate places inside a large university campus, Airport, Railway station or Museum. There are many mobile applications developed recently using different techniques. The work proposed in this paper is focusing on the need of visually challenged people while navigating in indoor environment. The approach proposed here implements the system using Beacon. The application developed with the system gives audio guidance to the user for navigation.

Wireless Indoor Positioning System for the Visually Impaired

The paper presents a prototype radio network aiding the visually impaired to navigate in indoor areas. The main purpose of the system is to provide accurate and reliable location information as well as to enable access to location related context information. The nodes of the network operate in two modes providing basis for both rough and precise user position estimation. The data transmitted by the nodes are used to get access to additional services, e.g. to retrieve position related context information.

An Indoor Navigation System for the Visually Impaired

Sensors, 2012

Navigation in indoor environments is highly challenging for the severely visually impaired, particularly in spaces visited for the first time. Several solutions have been proposed to deal with this challenge. Although some of them have shown to be useful in real scenarios, they involve an important deployment effort or use artifacts that are not natural for blind users. This paper presents an indoor navigation system that was designed taking into consideration usability as the quality requirement to be maximized. This solution enables one to identify the position of a person and calculates the velocity and direction of his movements. Using this information, the system determines the user's trajectory, locates possible obstacles in that route, and offers navigation information to the user. The solution has been evaluated using two experimental scenarios. Although the results are still not enough to provide strong conclusions, they indicate that the system is suitable to guide visually impaired people through an unknown built environment.

Indoor Navigation Assistant for Visually Impaired (INAVI)

Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering

Navigating in unknown places can be challenging for people who are deprived of the benefit of sight. The focus of advancements in navigation systems is extended onto helping the visually impaired understand the structure of their surroundings whilst they are traveling. The main idea behind the proposed method is to eliminate the dependency of the visually impaired on unreliable sources in an unfamiliar locality. Most of the public buildings these days, such as college and office buildings are equipped with their own Wi-Fi network which is used by the proposed indoor navigation assistant to direct the user while navigating inside the building. Using the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values that are taken from each access point, trilateration is performed for localization, and the speech output guides the person by informing about the current location and thus making it possible for the visually impaired to move inside a building without any human assistance.

An indoor navigation aid designed for visually impaired people

2008

Abstract This work introduces the hardware architecture and general principles of a portable indoor navigation system for guiding visually impaired people. It operates through wireless communication between a compact hardware interface unit carried by the user, a central processing unit and an active RFID unit.

blind assistant navigation system

This project presents the architecture as well as the implementation of a system that helps blind person navigate independently within an enclosed environment such as the home. The system uses a wireless mesh network to provide the first level localization. It also incorporates additional components to provide more refined location and orientation information. Optimal path planning is done by a server that communicates wirelessly with the portable mobile unit that can be pushed by the blind person. The blind person issues commands and receives direction responses using audio signals.

An indoor navigation system to support the visually impaired

2008

Indoor navigation technology is needed to support seamless mobility for the visually impaired. A small portable personal navigation device that provides current position, useful contextual wayfinding information about the indoor environment and directions to a destination would greatly improve access and independence for people with low vision. This paper describes the construction of such a device which utilizes a commercial Ultra-Wideband (UWB) asset tracking system to support real-time location and navigation information. Human trials were conducted to assess the efficacy of the system by comparing target-finding performance between blindfolded subjects using the navigation system for real-time guidance, and blindfolded subjects who only received speech information about their local surrounds but no route guidance information (similar to that available from a long cane or guide dog). A normal vision control condition was also run. The time and distance traveled was measured in each trial and a point-back test was performed after goal completion to assess cognitive map development. Statistically significant differences were observed between the three conditions in time and distance traveled; with the navigation system and the visual condition yielding the best results, and the navigation system dramatically outperforming the non-guided condition.

Information and Assisted Navigation System for Blind People

Nowadays public buildings are changing constantly, often people have to take different routes to reach known destinations. At the same time, new services and places are made available to attract more people to the shopping center. This dynamic environment is usually signalled and labelled with visual marks and signs which are not appropriated for blind persons. Therefore, blind users are unintentionally deprived of a full participation in the society. With the purpose of equalize the access to services and spaces among all persons, this work proposes an innovative indoor navigation and information system for public buildings, namely shopping centers, based on existing technologies not used for this purpose. Intending to allow a comfortable and helpful aid on blind persons trips to the shopping center, this proposal system relies on users smartphone and wireless sensors deployed in the environment.

A Wearable Indoor Navigation System for Blind and Visually Impaired Individuals

2015

Indoor positioning and navigation for blind and visually impaired individuals has become an active field of research. The development of a reliable positioning and navigational system will reduce the suffering of the people with visual disabilities, help them live more independently, and promote their employment opportunities. In this work, a coarse-to-fine multi-resolution model is proposed for indoor navigation in hallway environments based on the use of a wearable computer called the eButton. This selfconstructed device contains multiple sensors which are used for indoor positioning and localization in three layers of resolution: a global positioning system (GPS) layer for building identification; a Wi-Fi-barometer layer for rough position localization; and a digital cameramotion sensor layer for precise localization. In this multi-resolution model, a new theoretical framework is developed which uses the change of atmospheric pressure to determine the floor number in a multistory building. The digital camera and motion sensors within the eButton acquire both pictorial and motion data as a person with a normal vision walks along a hallway to establish a database. Precise indoor positioning and localization information is provided to the visually impaired individual based on a Kalman filter fusion algorithm and an automatic matching algorithm between the acquired images and those in the pre-established database. Motion calculation is based on the data from motion sensors is used to refine the localization result. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the algorithms. Our results show that the new device and algorithms can precisely determine the floor level and indoor location along hallways in multistory buildings, providing a powerful and unobtrusive navigational tool for blind and visually impaired individuals. v TABLE OF CONTENTS

Indoor Navigation Control System for Visually Impaired People

Blindness affects the perception of the surrounding environmental conditions. The primary requirement of any visual aid for mobility is obstacle detection. This work proposes an indoor navigation system for the visually impaired people. The system presented in this study is a robust, independent and portable aid to assist the user to navigate with auditory guidance. Computer-based algorithms developed in C sharp for the Microsoft Xbox Kinect 360 sensor allows to build a device for the navigational purpose. Kinect sensor streams both colour and depth data from the surrounding environment in real-time, which is then processed to provide the user with directional feedback using the wireless earphones. The effectiveness of the system was tested in experiments conducted with six blindfolded volunteers who successfully navigated across various indoor locations. Moreover, the user could also follow a specific individual through the output generated from the processed images.