An Astute Assistive Device for Mobility and Object Recognition for Visually Impaired People

Meshram, Vidula; Patil, Kailas; Shu, Felix Che

doi:10.1109/thms.2019.2931745

Cited by 92 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…In [14], an ultrasonic sensor is used to estimate the distance of objects at the level of eyesight and integrates a monocular camera to recognise objects and read out text around the user. In [15], ultrasonic sensors are used together with RFID readers and tags in order to identify indoor objects. For feedback, the senses of hearing and touch are the most common ones used for replacing the sense of sight.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vision‐Based System for Assisting Blind People to Wander Unknown Environments in a Safe Way

2021

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Vision is the principal source of information of the surrounding world. It facilitates our movement and development of everyday activities. In this sense, blind people have great difficulty for moving, especially in unknown environments, which reduces their autonomy and puts them at risk of suffering an accident. Electronic Travel Aids (ETAs) have emerged and provided outstanding navigation assistance for blind people. In this work, we present the methodology followed for implementing a stereo vision-based system that assists blind people to wander unknown environments in a safe way, by sensing the world, segmenting the floor in 3D, fusing local 2D grids considering the camera tracking, creating a global occupancy 2D grid, reacting to close obstacles, and generating vibration patterns with an haptic belt. For segmenting the floor in 3D, we evaluate normal vectors and orientation of the camera obtained from depth and inertial data, respectively. Next, we apply RANSAC for computing efficiently the equation of the supporting plane (floor). The local grids are fused, obtaining a global map with data of free and occupied areas along the whole trajectory. For parallel processing of dense data, we leverage the capacity of the Jetson TX2, achieving high performance, low power consumption, and portability. Finally, we present experimental results obtained with ten (10) participants, in different conditions, with obstacles of different height, hanging obstacles, and dynamic obstacles. These results show high performance and acceptance by the participants, highlighting the easiness to follow instructions and the short period of training.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vision‐Based System for Assisting Blind People to Wander Unknown Environments in a Safe Way

2021

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“…In the second one, the localization task is used to define their current location. Localization is an essential task in a variety of domains: robot navigation [ 118 ], automated cars [ 118 ], and BVIP navigation systems [ 23 , 80 ]. For BVIP, the precision of localization is significant because it affects the quality of instructions that are provided by a navigation system.…”

Section: Journey Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Review of Urban Navigation Systems for Visually Impaired People

El-taher

Taha

Courtney

et al. 2021

Sensors

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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.

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“…Meshram et al [22] introduced a system to help visually impaired people by autonomous navigation called NavCane. Auditory and tactile communications are used for transferring sensed data to the user.…”

Section: Overview Of the State Of The Artmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obstacle and Fall Detection to Guide the Visually Impaired People with Real Time Monitoring

et al. 2020

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To assist the visually impaired people to travel independently without external aid and monitoring real-time location information of these individuals, a wearable electronic device is presented in this paper. The system is able to detect the obstacles in front of the user, humps on the ground, moving objects. In addition, the system detects the sudden fall and informs the user's guardian. The system is comprised of ultrasonic sensors, a PIR motion sensor, an accelerometer, a smartphone application, a microcontroller, and a data transmission device. The microcontroller transmits the data to the user's smartphone via Bluetooth module. The smartphone application generates audible instructions to navigate the user properly. The application also updates the current location of the user to keep track and notifies the guardians when the user falls down or in distress. The developed system obtained an accuracy of about 98.34% when the obstacle is 50 cm away from the user. The system is proved to be very effective and efficient for users to navigate using precise speech instructions. Overall, the developed system will make the visually impaired people and their guardian's feel much safer and confident.

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An Astute Assistive Device for Mobility and Object Recognition for Visually Impaired People

Cited by 92 publications

References 27 publications

Vision‐Based System for Assisting Blind People to Wander Unknown Environments in a Safe Way

Vision‐Based System for Assisting Blind People to Wander Unknown Environments in a Safe Way

A Systematic Review of Urban Navigation Systems for Visually Impaired People

Obstacle and Fall Detection to Guide the Visually Impaired People with Real Time Monitoring

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