Multimodal sensing and intuitive steering assistance improve navigation and mobility for people with impaired vision

Abstract

Globally, more than 250 million people have impaired vision and face challenges navigating outside their homes, affecting their independence, mental health, and physical health. Navigating unfamiliar routes is challenging for people with impaired vision because it may require avoiding obstacles, recognizing objects, and wayfinding indoors and outdoors. Existing approaches such as white canes, guide dogs, and electronic travel aids only tackle some of these challenges. Here, we present the Augmented Cane, a white cane with a comprehensive set of sensors and an intuitive feedback method to steer the user, which addresses navigation challenges and improves mobility for people with impaired vision. We compared the Augmented Cane with a white cane by having sighted and visually impaired participants complete navigation challenges while blindfolded: walking along hallways, avoiding obstacles, and following outdoor waypoints. Across all experiments, the Augmented Cane increased the walking speed for participants with impaired vision by 18 ± 7% and sighted participants by 35 ± 12% compared with a white cane. The increase in walking speed may be due to accurate steering assistance, reduced cognitive load, fewer contacts with the environment, and higher participant confidence. We also demonstrate advanced navigation capabilities of the Augmented Cane: indoor wayfinding, recognizing and steering the participant to a key object, and navigating a sequence of indoor and outdoor challenges. The open-source and low-cost design of the Augmented Cane provides a platform that may improve the mobility and quality of life of people with impaired vision.

Laser Sensing and Vision Sensing Smart Blind Cane: A Review

“…In order to enable the laser smart cane to acquire navigation mapping capability, Slade P et al (2021) [ 21 ] proposed an active smart cane based on laser SLAM technology. Two-dimensional Lidar, monocular camera, IMU and GPS module were installed on the cane, as shown in Figure 3 .…”

“…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.…”

Exploring Levels of Control for a Navigation Assistant for Blind Travelers

“…Augmented Cane [18] is a white cane with an omni-wheel at the tip that allows the user to control the forward speed while the device steers. This device provides obstacle avoidance, indoor/outdoor navigation, and object localization, yet it is reported as heavy and does not allow the user to input their desired direction of travel.…”

SENSATION: A light wearable, portable and cost-effective system to support assistive navigation of blind or visually impaired pedestrians

“…Another system for collision avoidance was developed at Stanford University in 2021: Slade et al [13] proposed an augmented cane with integrated sensors such as LIDAR, GPS, gyroscope, and magnetometer. The LIDAR (laser imaging, detection, and ranging) sensors were used to detect obstacles and to estimate their distance and calculate a path to navigate around the obstacle.…”