Support Strategies for Remote Guides in Assisting People with Visual Impairments for Effective Indoor Navigation

Kamikubo, Rie; Kato, Naoya; Higuchi, Keita; Yonetani, Ryo; Sato, Yoichi

doi:10.1145/3313831.3376823

Cited by 19 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Agents were given sufficient time (∼10 min) and instructions to familiarize themselves with the prototype. Referring to the expressions for giving guidance, we introduced agents with directional, numerical, descriptive, and status check instructions [26]. Agents were encouraged to act as professionally as possible in terms of describing directional cues with contextual details and avoiding numerical terms.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants Our findings show that the interactive 3D maps alleviate the navigational challenges for untrained agents by supplementing the environmental knowledge, real-time localization, and orientation. Trained agents are also bothered by these challenges [26]. Thus, we believe that interactive 3D maps have the potential to be a boost for trained RSA agents.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The basic video chat function is common and can be executed with off-the-shelf tools. For example, Kamikubo et al [26] realized the user-agent interaction with a video conferencing system.…”

Section: Design Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As RSA services have gained popularity, a growing number of researchers started to study different aspects of these services. Kamikubo et al [26] and Lee et al [27,19,28,29] studied the interaction paradigm between RSA agents and visually impaired users and reported several challenges for RSA agents. Some of the key challenges include agents' lack of confidence due to unfamiliarity of the users' current physical environment, not having indoor maps with finer details, continuously tracking and orienting the user in the map and within his or her surroundings, estimating objects' depth in users' camera feed and describing those in realtime, and developing mutual trust and synergy with the users.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Feasibility of Interactive 3D Map for Remote Sighted Assistance

Xie¹,

Yu²,

Lee³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Remote sighted assistance (RSA) has emerged as a conversational assistive technology, where remote sighted workers, i.e., agents, provide real-time assistance to users with vision impairments via videochat-like communication. Researchers found that agents' lack of environmental knowledge, the difficulty of orienting users in their surroundings, and the inability to estimate distances from users' camera feeds are key challenges to sighted agents. To address these challenges, researchers have suggested assisting agents with computer vision technologies, especially 3D reconstruction. This paper presents a high-fidelity prototype of such an RSA, where agents use interactive 3D maps with localization capability. We conducted a walkthrough study with thirteen agents and one user with simulated vision impairment using this prototype. The study revealed that, compared to baseline RSA, the agents were significantly faster in providing navigational assistance to users, and their mental workload was significantly reduced -all indicate the feasibility and prospect of 3D maps in RSA.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitations and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Design Objectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Feasibility of Interactive 3D Map for Remote Sighted Assistance

Xie¹,

Yu²,

Lee³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…These applications have also been adopted for remote mobility support. However, prior work [30] reported that the effectiveness of remote navigational guidance suffered from inconsistent verbal description strategies. LightGuide can potentially address this problem by providing intuitive directional cues through unified standards.…”

Section: Integrating Lightguide Into Navigational Systems For Practical Usementioning

confidence: 99%

LightGuide

Yang

et al. 2021

Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol.

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Precise and reliable directional feedback is crucial for electronic traveling aids that guide visually impaired people along safe paths. A large proportion of visually impaired people can determine light position using their light perception. This work presents LightGuide, a directional feedback solution that indicates a safe direction of travel via the position of a light within the user's visual field. We prototyped LightGuide using an LED strip attached to the brim of a cap, and conducted three user studies to explore the effectiveness of LightGuide compared to HapticBag, a state-of-the-art baseline solution that indicates directions through on-shoulder vibrations. Results showed that, with LightGuide, participants turned to target directions in place more quickly and smoothly, and navigated along basic and complex paths more efficiently, smoothly, and accurately than HapticBag. Users' subjective feedback implied that LightGuide was easy to learn and intuitive to use. The potential limitations of using LightGuide in real environments are subsequently discussed.

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