In this paper, a personal assistant and navigator system for visually impaired people will be described. The showcase presented intends to demonstrate how partially sighted people could be aided by the technology in performing an ordinary activity, like going to a mall and moving inside it to find a specific product. We propose an Android application that integrates Pedestrian Dead Reckoning and Computer Vision algorithms, using an off-the-shelf Smartphone connected to a Smartwatch. The detection, recognition and pose estimation of specific objects or features in the scene derive an estimate of user location with sub-meter accuracy when combined with a hardware-sensor pedometer. The proposed prototype interfaces with a user by means of Augmented Reality, exploring a variety of sensorial modalities other than just visual overlay, namely audio and haptic modalities, to create a seamless immersive user experience. The interface and interaction of the preliminary platform have been studied through specific evaluation methods. The feedback gathered will be taken into consideration to further improve the proposed system.

Abstract-Recently, we have seen an intensified development of head mounted displays (HMD).

Head-mounted displays and other wearable devices open up for innovative types of interaction for wearable augmented reality (AR). However, to design and evaluate these new types of AR user interfaces, it is essential to quickly simulate undeveloped components of the system and collect feedback from potential users early in the design process. One way of doing this is the wizard of Oz (WOZ) method. The basic idea behind WOZ is to create the illusion of a working system by having a human operator, performing some or all of the system’s functions. WozARd is a WOZ method developed for wearable AR interaction. The presented pilot study was an initial investigation of the capability of the WozARd method to simulate an AR city tour. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 21 participants performing a simulated AR city tour. The data analysis focused on seven categories that can have an impact on how the WozARd method is perceived by participants: precision, relevance, responsiveness, technical stability, visual fidelity, general user-experience, and human-operator performance. Overall, the results indicate that the participants perceived the simulated AR city tour as a relatively realistic experience despite a certain degree of technical instability and human-operator mistakes.

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