A Novel Perceptive Robotic Cane with Haptic Navigation for Enabling Vision-Independent Participation in the Social Dynamics of Seat Choice

Laser Sensing and Vision Sensing Smart Blind Cane: A Review

“…It can also guide the visually impaired by receiving navigation commands from the server. In order to improve the accuracy of visual SLAM in completing a certain task in navigation, S Agrawal et al (2022) [ 20 ] proposed a visual SLAM smart blind cane with tactile navigation. The system is equipped with a depth camera and IMU for target positioning and path planning.…”

“…At present, the commercial smart canes can be divided into two categories: (1) Electronic Travel Aid (ETAs), such as ultrasonic, millimeter wave, infrared, IMU, vision, laser smart canes, etc., which can collect the environmental information of the visually impaired; (2) Electronic Orientation Aid (EOAs), such as GPS and GIS smart cane, which can determine the exact location of the visually impaired. Since the initial development of smart guide technology, ultrasonic sensor [ 18 ], infrared sensor [ 19 ], camera [ 20 ], Lidar [ 21 ], laser ranging scanner [ 22 ], millimeter-wave radar [ 23 ], color sensor [ 24 ], electronic compass [ 25 ], (IMU) Inertial Measurement Unit [ 26 ], (RFID)Radio Frequency Identification [ 27 ], GPS (Global Positioning System) [ 28 ] and GIS (Geographic Information System) [ 29 ], VR technology [ 30 ], virtual cane [ 31 ] and other sensors or schemes are flooded into the research and development of smart canes. Since these schemes use a single or two sensors, the function of this kind of smart cane is relatively simple, and it can only obtain certain information about obstacles in the environment around the visually impaired, such as direction, distance, shape, size, color, position and others, but no comprehensive environmental data around.…”

MateRobot: Material Recognition in Wearable Robotics for People with Visual Impairments

“…A vision-based navigation system [7], calculating precise positions and orientations, is proposed to help People with Visual Impairments (PVI) stay on track during walking, and it can recognize unexpected dynamic obstacles, to reduce the danger on navigation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an object-finding algorithm is introduced in [8] to build an end-to-end perception robotic cane system, which can enable socially-preferred autonomous goal selection and navigation in indoor spaces. Specifically, an algorithm for social norm-aware chair selection is proposed, which is optimized for convenience, intimacy, and privacy, respectively.…”

“…Thus, in this work, we mainly focus on designing a human-friendly wearable device for PVI to recognize materials. In recent years, significant progress has been witnessed in the field of assistive technology that can support PVI in several activities, such as navigation [7], object localization [8], indoor understanding [9], and path orientation [10]. While panoptic predictions were provided in [4], transparent objects were recognized in [10], both can only deliver limited material categories.…”

Multi-Functional Glasses for the Blind and Visually Impaired: Design and Development

“…According to The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), the number of blind people worldwide will increase from 43 million in 2020 to 61 million in 2050, with moderate to severe from 295 to 474 million (The International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), 2023). These user groups require special assistance as they cannot navigate an unknown environment without the help of assistive technology (Agrawal et al, 2022). Researchers are investigating how to make the lives of people with disabilities and older adults, of which a significant portion has a visual impairment to some extent, comfortable, independent, and free of participation in social activities and research (Brinkley, 2021; Brinkley, Daily, et al, 2019; Brinkley et al, 2017, 2018, 2022; Brinkley, Posadas, et al, 2019; Enam et al, 2023; Gluck et al, 2020).…”