The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in 2012 that globally 285 million people have low vision or are blind. A similar number of an estimated 253 million people was reported by the World Blind Union (WBU) in 2015. Most visually impaired or blind persons rely on white canes or service dogs to improve their daily mobility. However, the use of white canes limits the detection distance of objects to the length of the cane or approximately 1.5m. On the other hand, the number of guide dogs is limited, and the training of a service animal is very expensive. Therefore, there is a real need for systems that increase the mobility of the visually impaired, but at the same time are affordable, comfortable, and easy to use.This article presents a complete assistive navigation system, called SENSATION: Sidewalk Environment Detection System for Assistive Navigation, which is inexpensive, easy to wear and does not interfere with the additional usage of a white cane. It is a standalone system that does not depend on cloud computing and uses deep learning models on the device for the immediate detection of the environment along with image segmentation and an algorithm to correct drifting while walking.
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