scholarly journals A CNN-Based Wearable Assistive System for Visually Impaired People Walking Outdoors

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 10026
Author(s):  
I-Hsuan Hsieh ◽  
Hsiao-Chu Cheng ◽  
Hao-Hsiang Ke ◽  
Hsiang-Chieh Chen ◽  
Wen-June Wang

In this study, we propose an assistive system for helping visually impaired people walk outdoors. This assistive system contains an embedded system—Jetson AGX Xavier (manufacture by Nvidia in Santa Clara, CA, USA) and a binocular depth camera—ZED 2 (manufacture by Stereolabs in San Francisco, CA, USA). Based on the CNN neural network FAST-SCNN and the depth map obtained by the ZED 2, the image of the environment in front of the visually impaired user is split into seven equal divisions. A walkability confidence value for each division is computed, and a voice prompt is played to guide the user toward the most appropriate direction such that the visually impaired user can navigate a safe path on the sidewalk, avoid any obstacles, or walk on the crosswalk safely. Furthermore, the obstacle in front of the user is identified by the network YOLOv5s proposed by Jocher, G. et al. Finally, we provided the proposed assistive system to a visually impaired person and experimented around an MRT station in Taiwan. The visually impaired person indicated that the proposed system indeed helped him feel safer when walking outdoors. The experiment also verified that the system could effectively guide the visually impaired person walking safely on the sidewalk and crosswalks.

Author(s):  
Kavita Pandey ◽  
Dhiraj Pandey ◽  
Vatsalya Yadav ◽  
Shriya Vikhram

Background: According to the WHO report, around 4.07% of the world's population is visually impaired. About 90% of the visually impaired users live in the lower economic strata. In the fast moving technology, most of the invention misses the need of these people. Mainly the technologies were designed for mainstream people; visually impaired people always find an inability to access it. This inability arises primarily for reasons such as cost, for example, Perkins Brailler costs 80-248 dollars for the simple purpose of Braille input. Another major reason is the hassle of carrying the big equipment. Objective: Keeping all this in mind and making technology as their best friends, MAGIC-1 has been designed. The goal is to provide a solution in terms of an application, which helps the visually impaired user in their daily life activities. Method: The proposed solution assists visually impaired users through smart phone technology. If visually impaired users ever wished to have a touched guide into a smart phone, MAGIC-1 has the solution that consolidates all the important features in their daily activities. Results: The performance of the solution as a whole and its individual features in terms of usability, utility and other metrics, etc. has been tested with sample visually impaired users. Moreover, their performances in term of Errors per Word and Words per Minute have been observed. Conclusion: MAGIC-I, the proposed solution works as an assistant of visually impaired users to overcome their daily struggles and stay more connected to the world. A visually impaired user can communicate via their mobile devices with features like eyes free texting using braille, voice calling etc. They can easily take help in an emergency situation with the options of SOS emergency calling and video assistance.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3.12) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
N Vignesh ◽  
Meghachandra Srinivas Reddy.P ◽  
Nirmal Raja.G ◽  
Elamaram E ◽  
B Sudhakar

Eyes play important role in our day to day lives and are perhaps the most valuable gift we have. This world is visible to us because we are blessed with eyesight. But there are some people who lag this ability of visualizing these things. Due to this, they will undergo a lot of troubles o move comfortably in public places. Hence, wearable device should design for such visual impaired people. A smart shoe is wearable system design to provide directional information to visually impaired people. To provide smart and sensible navigation guidance to visually impaired people, the system has great potential especially when integrated with visual processing units. During the operation, the user is supposed to wear the shoes. When sensors will detect any obstacle, user will be informed through Android system being used by the user. The Smart Shoes along with the application on the Android system shall help the user in moving around independently.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hana Porkertová

This article thematizes relations between visual impairment and urban space, drawing from the analytical perspective of actor-network theory (ANT). It traces the ways in which visually impaired people create specific connections with space and how they transform it. Urban space is configured for use by able-bodied persons, for whom movement within it is easy and seems to be disembodied. However, for those who defy the standardization of space, the materiality of movement is constantly present and visible, because the passages are difficult to make and are not ready in advance. These materialities, as well as the strategies that people use to make connections with urban space, differ according to the assemblages that visually impaired people create. A route is different with a cane, a human companion, a guide dog, or the use of a combination of such assistance; the visually impaired person pays attention to different clues, follows specific lines, and other information is important and available. Each configuration makes it possible or impossible to do something; this shows disability as dynamic, and demonstrates the collective nature of action, which is more visible and palpable in the case of a disabled person.


Author(s):  
Tejal Adep ◽  
Rutuja Nikam ◽  
Sayali Wanewe ◽  
Dr. Ketaki B. Naik

Blind people face the problem in daily life. They can't even walk without any aid. Many times they rely on others for help. Several technologies for the assistance of visually impaired people have been developed. Among the various technologies being utilized to assist the blind, Computer Vision-based solutions are emerging as one of the most promising options due to their affordability and accessibility. This paper proposes a system for visually impaired people. The proposed system aims to create a wearable visual aid for visually impaired people in which speech commands are accepted by the user. Its functionality addresses the identification of objects and signboards. This will help the visually impaired person to manage day-to-day activities and navigate through his/her surroundings. Raspberry Pi is used to implement artificial vision using python language on the Open CV platform.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (9) ◽  
pp. 941
Author(s):  
Rakesh Chandra Joshi ◽  
Saumya Yadav ◽  
Malay Kishore Dutta ◽  
Carlos M. Travieso-Gonzalez

Visually impaired people face numerous difficulties in their daily life, and technological interventions may assist them to meet these challenges. This paper proposes an artificial intelligence-based fully automatic assistive technology to recognize different objects, and auditory inputs are provided to the user in real time, which gives better understanding to the visually impaired person about their surroundings. A deep-learning model is trained with multiple images of objects that are highly relevant to the visually impaired person. Training images are augmented and manually annotated to bring more robustness to the trained model. In addition to computer vision-based techniques for object recognition, a distance-measuring sensor is integrated to make the device more comprehensive by recognizing obstacles while navigating from one place to another. The auditory information that is conveyed to the user after scene segmentation and obstacle identification is optimized to obtain more information in less time for faster processing of video frames. The average accuracy of this proposed method is 95.19% and 99.69% for object detection and recognition, respectively. The time complexity is low, allowing a user to perceive the surrounding scene in real time.


Author(s):  
Shin’ichiro Uno ◽  
Yasuo Suzuki ◽  
Takashi Watanabe ◽  
Miku Matsumoto ◽  
Yan Wang

We developed software called SIPReS, which describes two-dimensional images with sound. With this system, visually-impaired people can tell the location of a certain point in an image just by hearing notes of frequency each assigned according to the brightness of the point a user touches on. It can run on Android smartphones and tablets. We conducted a small-scale experiment to see if a visually-impaired person can recognize images with SIPReS. In the experiment, the subject successfully recognized if there is an object or not. He also recognized the location information. The experiment suggests this application’s potential as image recognition software.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Adán Landa-Hernández ◽  
Heriberto Casarubias-Vargas ◽  
Eduardo Bayro-Corrochano

In this paper we present the design of a device to guide the visually impaired person who normally uses a cane. We propose a non-invasive device that will help blind and visually impaired people to navigate. The system uses stereoscopic vision, a RGB-D sensor and an IMU to process images and to compute the distances from obstacles relative to cameras and to search for free walking paths in the scene. This computing is done using stereo vision, vanishing points, and fuzzy rules. Vanishing points are used to obtain a main orientation in structured spaces. Since the guidance system is related to a spatial reference system, the vanishing point is used like a virtual compass that helps the blind to orient him- or herself towards a goal. Reinforced with fuzzy decision rules, the system supports the blind in avoiding obstacles, thus the blind person is able to cross structured spaces and avoid obstacles without the need for a cane.


Author(s):  
Mrs.N.Deepika ◽  
Ms Joypriyanka.M

This paper proposes an effective device for visually impaired person in order to have betterment in their routine life. The spread of visually impairment is very sensitive issue worldwide. Here we develop a Smart system for visually impaired, that make use of ultrasonic sensor and camera.The most point of this work is to plan a voice-based cautioning framework for the outwardly impeded individuals. Visually impaired individual’s finds navigation difficult as they struggle every day in performing actions for bypassing obstacles and hurdles in their regular life. In order to help visually impaired people navigate safely and quickly this system is proposed. Ultrasonic sensor is set on the exhibition which is utilized for impediment location with separate sign. The camera is set to detect the object before the outwardly impeded individuals and alarm them utilizing APR voice module. This system prevents the visually impaired people accidents and identifies the object in front of them. The scope of the work is extracting the object’s image and processing them in the knowledge base and interpret the captured one. Assistive Innovation for individuals with outwardly disabilities is anticipated to develop at a quick pace and affect the lives of people having visual impedance and the elderly ways previously is not possible. KEY WORDS: SURF-Speedup Robust Feature, VPN- Visual Handling Unit, NCS-Neural Compute Adhere, APR-Apache Portable Runtime.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-21
Author(s):  
Anusree ◽  
Periasamy C ◽  
Krishnapriya V

There are many issues over which humans have no control. Blindness is one of such issues. It snatches the vivid visual beauty of the world from an individual’s life.But missing the beauty of nature becomes one of the last worries of such people as they have to face numerous difficulties in order to perform even the most basics of tasks in their day to day life. One of their most important problems is of transport, such as crossing roads, traveling in trains, or in any other public places. A visually impaired person to survive the fittest in this world, the person must go through all the obstacles without the guidance of others. One of the most important measures to avoid the obstacle by the blind is to provide an assistive implementation, which can help to wander on their own. The main aim of this project is to provide an assistive technology used for the purpose of enhancing the mobility of the blind pedestrian which is commonly referred to as Electronic Travel Aid (ETA) and to motivate the blind without having the inferior feeling of their problem and pay away the blind to move on their own . In this project, a smart guiding ETA is used to guide the user to sense the obstacle before them. This device eliminates the requirement of human assistance for blind while traveling outside. It will identify all obstacles in the path with the help of various sensors installed in it. The microcontroller will retrieve data and pass it on as vibrations which will notify the user about hurdles.


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