Tools and Technologies for Blind and Visually Impaired Navigation Support: A Review

Abstract

The development of navigation tools for people who are visually impaired had become an important concern in the research area of assistive technologies. This paper gives a comprehensive review of different articles published in the area of navigation solutions for people who are visually impaired. Unlike other review papers, this review considers major solutions that work in both the indoor or/and outdoor environments which are based on different technology. From the review, it became clear that the navigation systems proposed for the target users lack some core features that are quite important for independent navigation. Also, there can be instances in which humanitarian conditions also have to be considered in the navigation system design. Based on these findings, a set of recommendations are also given which can be considered in the future design of navigation systems for blind and visually impaired people.

Methodologies and evaluation of electronic travel aids for the visually impaired people: a review

“…IMU, gyroscope, compass and magnetometer are commonly found in smartphone devices [25], [24]. Camera based wayfinding techniques include SLAM [36], Microsoft Kinect [37]- [39], novel liquid sound navigation [40] and FL2-0352 camera [41]. Machine learning methods which are getting numerous attention for researchers nowadays [42], [43] such as particle swarm optimization (PSO) [44] have also been implemented for navigation purposes.…”

Object Detection System for Visually Impaired Persons Using Smartphone

“…The objective of the papers [8,9] is to review the different navigation solutions available for visually impaired persons that work both in indoor and outdoor environment. A thorough review of the existing navigation solutions in both indoor and outdoor is made.…”

Design and Development of a Wearable Assistive Device Integrating a Fuzzy Decision Support System for Blind and Visually Impaired People

“…A wearable navigation device combining semantic visual SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and a powerful mobile computing platform was proposed to guide navigation for blind people [ 20 ]. Various recent navigation tools to help visually impaired people are presented in [ 21 ]. Generally, the cane is the most popular designed system dedicated to navigation for blind people, including the white cane [ 22 ], the smart cane [ 23 ], and the laser cane [ 24 ].…”