scholarly journals Indoor-Guided Navigation for People Who Are Blind: Crowdsourcing for Route Mapping and Assistance

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 523
Author(s):  
Darius Plikynas ◽  
Audrius Indriulionis ◽  
Algirdas Laukaitis ◽  
Leonidas Sakalauskas
Keyword(s):  
Computational Intelligence ◽  
Video Stream ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Indoor Navigation ◽  
Online Help ◽  
Depth Cameras ◽  
Sensory Data ◽  
Semantic Data ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
Audio Interfaces

This paper presents an approach to enhance electronic traveling aids (ETAs) for people who are blind and severely visually impaired (BSVI) using indoor orientation and guided navigation by employing social outsourcing of indoor route mapping and assistance processes. This type of approach is necessary because GPS does not work well, and infrastructural investments are absent or too costly to install for indoor navigation. Our approach proposes the prior outsourcing of vision-based recordings of indoor routes from an online network of seeing volunteers, who gather and constantly update a web cloud database of indoor routes using specialized sensory equipment and web services. Computational intelligence-based algorithms process sensory data and prepare them for BSVI usage. In this way, people who are BSVI can obtain ready-to-use access to the indoor routes database. This type of service has not previously been offered in such a setting. Specialized wearable sensory ETA equipment, depth cameras, smartphones, computer vision algorithms, tactile and audio interfaces, and computational intelligence algorithms are employed for that matter. The integration of semantic data of points of interest (such as stairs, doors, WC, entrances/exits) and evacuation schemes could make the proposed approach even more attractive to BVSI users. Presented approach crowdsources volunteers’ real-time online help for complex navigational situations using a mobile app, a live video stream from BSVI wearable cameras, and digitalized maps of buildings’ evacuation schemes.

scholarly journals Enhancing Manual Scan Registration Using Audio Cues

2014 ◽  
Vol XL-4 ◽  
pp. 187-194
Author(s):  
T. Ntsoko ◽  
G. Sithole
Keyword(s):  
Point Cloud ◽  
Transfer Functions ◽  
Indoor Navigation ◽  
Cloud Data ◽  
Audio Cues ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
Other Information ◽  
Scan Registration ◽  
Manual Interaction

Indoor mapping and modelling requires that acquired data be processed by editing, fusing, formatting the data, amongst other operations. Currently the manual interaction the user has with the point cloud (data) while processing it is visual. Visual interaction does have limitations, however. One way of dealing with these limitations is to augment audio in point cloud processing. Audio augmentation entails associating points of interest in the point cloud with audio objects. In coarse scan registration, reverberation, intensity and frequency audio cues were exploited to help the user estimate depth and occupancy of space of points of interest. Depth estimations were made reliably well when intensity and frequency were both used as depth cues. Coarse changes of depth could be estimated in this manner. The depth between surfaces can therefore be estimated with the aid of the audio objects. Sound reflections of an audio object provided reliable information of the object surroundings in some instances. For a point/area of interest in the point cloud, these reflections can be used to determine the unseen events around that point/area of interest. Other processing techniques could benefit from this while other information is estimated using other audio cues like binaural cues and Head Related Transfer Functions. These other cues could be used in position estimations of audio objects to aid in problems such as indoor navigation problems.

Leveraging Pervasive Games for Tourism

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Nóbrega ◽  
João Jacob ◽  
António Coelho ◽  
João Ribeiro ◽  
Jessika Weber ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Game Design ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Urban Tourism ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Dynamic Information ◽  
App Development ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
Current Location

Creating an augmented reality (AR) urban tourism application presents several interactivity challenges on how to convey an engaging multimedia experience on-site. This article describes a methodology for fast prototyping of multimedia mobile applications dedicated to urban tourism storytelling with special focus on AR techniques. Following the lessons learned in previous applications the systematic creation of location-based augmented reality (LBAR) applications is explored in this article. The goal is to create serious games for tourism that follow a main narrative but where the story can automatically adapt itself to the current location of the player, assimilate possible detours and allow posterior out-of-location playback. Adaptable stories can use dynamic information from map sources such as points of interest (POI), elevation or virtual buildings. The article discusses and presents solutions for media acquisition, interactive storytelling, game-design interface and multi-disciplinary coordination for mobile app development.

scholarly journals An Integrated System for Urban Parks Touring and Management

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Kostis Pristouris ◽  
Harry Nakos ◽  
Yannis Stavrakas ◽  
Konstantinos I. Kotsopoulos ◽  
Theofanis Alexandridis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Web Applications ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Urban Parks ◽  
Mobile App ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Visitor Experience ◽  
Points Of Interest ◽  
Green Tourism ◽  
Functional Components

Urban parks are important recreational spaces of environmental interest for citizens and city visitors. Targeted and attractive promotion of these areas can help develop alternative forms of “green tourism” and increase environmental awareness among citizens, which is particularly important and vital for the future of the planet. New technologies are a key tool for improving the experience of touring urban parks, as they can make the tour much more attractive by highlighting interesting information about the flora and fauna of the park, as well as various other points of interest. This paper presents an integrated system based on augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and data analytics methodologies, comprising both mobile and web applications, focusing on urban parks touring and management, respectively. Through the mobile app for the park visitors, an attractive, interactive touring environment is created which highlights the environmental and historical interest of those areas. At the same time, the web applications for the park managers receive and analyze visitor data to help improve the visitor experience and the overall quality of the park. Finally, the developed integrated system is evaluated to ensure that it meets all user requirements and that its usability and functional components satisfy both groups of potential users, i.e., park visitors and park managers.

Enhanced Kalman filter algorithm using fuzzy inference for improving position estimation in indoor navigation

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 8991-9005
Author(s):  
Faisal Jamil ◽  
DoHyeun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Kalman Filter ◽  
Indoor Environment ◽  
Fuzzy Inference ◽  
Position Estimation ◽  
Indoor Navigation ◽  
Measurement Unit ◽  
Fusion Algorithm ◽  
Positioning Systems ◽  
Sensory Data ◽  
Kalman Filter Algorithm

In recent few years, the widespread applications of indoor navigation have compelled the research community to propose novel solutions for detecting objects position in the Indoor environment. Various approaches have been proposed and implemented concerning the indoor positioning systems. This study propose an fuzzy inference based Kalman filter to improve the position estimation in indoor navigation. The presented system is based on FIS based Kalman filter aiming at predicting the actual sensor readings from the available noisy sensor measurements. The proposed approach has two main components, i.e., multi sensor fusion algorithm for positioning estimation and FIS based Kalman filter algorithm. The position estimation module is used to determine the object location in an indoor environment in an accurate way. Similarly, the FIS based Kalman filter is used to control and tune the Kalman filter by considering the previous output as a feedback. The Kalman filter predicts the actual sensor readings from the available noisy readings. To evaluate the proposed approach, the next-generation inertial measurement unit is used to acquire a three-axis gyroscope and accelerometer sensory data. Lastly, the proposed approach’s performance has been investigated considering the MAD, RMSE, and MSE metrics. The obtained results illustrate that the FIS based Kalman filter improve the prediction accuracy against the traditional Kalman filter approach.

scholarly journals Interconnecting Haptic Interfaces through The Internet

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Kokkonis ◽  
Kostas E. Psannis ◽  
Sotirios Kontogiannis ◽  
Petros Nicopolitidis ◽  
Manos Roumeliotis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Video Stream ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Haptic Interfaces ◽  
Transport Protocols ◽  
Sensory Data ◽  
Delay Jitter ◽  
Packet Arrival

Supermedia streams transfer video, audio, haptic and other sensory data. Real -time transfering of supermedia streams over the Internet is quite challenging. This paper outlines the proposed protocols for transferring supermedia streams over the Internet. Moreover, it describes the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for supermedia applications that a network has to fulfill. Extensive simulations and experiments for the performance evaluation of transport protocols for real time transferring HEVC streams with supermedia data are carried out. Complements, differences and relevancies between simulation and real world experiments are discussed. The metrics that are measured for the performance evaluation are delay, jitter, throughput, efficiency, packet loss and one proposed by the authors, packet arrival deviation. The simulation tests reveal which protocols could be used for the transfer of real-time supermedia data with a HEVC video stream.

scholarly journals Extraction of Structural and Semantic Data from 2D Floor Plans for Interactive and Immersive VR Real Estate Exploration

Technologies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Gerstweiler ◽  
Lukas Furlan ◽  
Mikhail Timofeev ◽  
Hannes Kaufmann
Keyword(s):  
Interior Design ◽  
User Study ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Indoor Navigation ◽  
Indoor Environments ◽  
Floor Plan ◽  
Semantic Data ◽  
Engineering Standards ◽  
Floor Plans ◽  
Definition Of

Three-dimensional reconstructions of indoor environments are useful in various augmented and virtual scenarios. Creating a realistic virtual apartment in 3D manually does not only take time, but also needs skilled people for implementation. Analyzing a floor plan is a complicated task. Due to the lack of engineering standards in creating these drawings, they can have multiple different appearances for the same building. This paper proposes multiple models and heuristics which enable fully automated 3D reconstructions out of only a 2D floor plan. Our study focuses on floor plan analysis and definition of special requirements for a 3D building model used in a Virtual Reality (VR) setup. The proposed method automatically analyzes floor plans with a pattern recognition approach, thereby extracting accurate metric information about important components of the building. An algorithm for mesh generation and extracting semantic information such as apartment separation and room type estimation is presented. A novel method for VR interaction with interior design completes the framework. The result of the presented system is intended to be used for presenting a large number of apartments to customers. It can also be used as a base for purposes such as furnishing apartments, realistic occlusions for AR (Augmented Reality) applications such as indoor navigation or analyzing purposes. Finally, a technical evaluation and an interactive user study prove the advantages of the presented system.

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