A Systematic Review of Urban Navigation Systems for Visually Impaired People

Abstract

Blind and Visually impaired people (BVIP) face a range of practical difficulties when undertaking outdoor journeys as pedestrians. Over the past decade, a variety of assistive devices have been researched and developed to help BVIP navigate more safely and independently. In addition, research in overlapping domains are addressing the problem of automatic environment interpretation using computer vision and machine learning, particularly deep learning, approaches. Our aim in this article is to present a comprehensive review of research directly in, or relevant to, assistive outdoor navigation for BVIP. We breakdown the navigation area into a series of navigation phases and tasks. We then use this structure for our systematic review of research, analysing articles, methods, datasets and current limitations by task. We also provide an overview of commercial and non-commercial navigation applications targeted at BVIP. Our review contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a comprehensive, structured analysis of work in the domain, including the state of the art, and guidance on future directions. It will support both researchers and other stakeholders in the domain to establish an informed view of research progress.

Accessible wayfinding and navigation: a systematic mapping study

“…These are described and evaluated in the paper, on the basis of performance features concerning capturing device, feedback, coverage area, weight, and cost. A systematic review of outdoor pedestrian navigation systems for visually impaired people reported in literature from 2015 to 2020 is presented in [49]; even though the system analysis is very accurate leading to an interesting hierarchical taxonomy, the scope of this review is limited to one type of users moving in urban environments only. A systematic review of solutions for blind and visuallyimpaired people is presented in [87]: 191 most relevant articles published between 2011 and 2020 have been selected from different digital libraries and analyzed according to different dimensions, such as approaches and technologies proposed for navigation, hardware components used for obstacle avoidance, and adopted performance metrics.…”

An Overview of Machine Learning and 5G for People with Disabilities

“…Additionally, 5G networks can reduce roundtrip latency to 1 ms [42]. Visually impaired applications with strict latency requirements, such as navigation systems [43], can benefit significantly. The same applies to sound recognition systems for the hearing impaired, designed to prevent accidents or alert about emergencies (e.g., fire alarm, car horn).…”

An Outdoor Navigation Assistance System for Visually Impaired People in Public Transportation

“…Accordingly, Gamal et al in [19] presented an assistance system for visually impaired people when navigating in unknown outdoor spaces, they used a deep-learning method to give the user independent mobility. Taher et al [24] presented a systematic analysis of the recently developed systems for urban navigation of visually impaired people. For his part, Babar et al [25] presented a teleguidance-based navigation assistance system for the blind and the visually impaired.…”