scholarly journals Wearable Urban Mobility Assistive Device for Visually Impaired Pedestrians Using a Smartphone and a Tactile-Foot Interface

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5274
Author(s):  
Ricardo Tachiquin ◽  
Ramiro Velázquez ◽  
Carolina Del-Valle-Soto ◽  
Carlos A. Gutiérrez ◽  
Miguel Carrasco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Assistive Technology ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Assistive Device ◽  
Urban Mobility ◽  
Urban Settings ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Outdoor Environments

This paper reports on the progress of a wearable assistive technology (AT) device designed to enhance the independent, safe, and efficient mobility of blind and visually impaired pedestrians in outdoor environments. Such device exploits the smartphone’s positioning and computing capabilities to locate and guide users along urban settings. The necessary navigation instructions to reach a destination are encoded as vibrating patterns which are conveyed to the user via a foot-placed tactile interface. To determine the performance of the proposed AT device, two user experiments were conducted. The first one requested a group of 20 voluntary normally sighted subjects to recognize the feedback provided by the tactile-foot interface. The results showed recognition rates over 93%. The second experiment involved two blind voluntary subjects which were assisted to find target destinations along public urban pathways. Results show that the subjects successfully accomplished the task and suggest that blind and visually impaired pedestrians might find the AT device and its concept approach useful, friendly, fast to master, and easy to use.

scholarly journals Technological Opportunity Analysis: Assistive Technology for Blind and Visually Impaired People

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8689 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jumi Hwang ◽  
Kyung Hee Kim ◽  
Jong Gyu Hwang ◽  
Sungchan Jun ◽  
Jiwon Yu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Assistive Technology ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Activity Index ◽  
Assistive Technologies ◽  
Assistive Device ◽  
Signal Acquisition ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Generative Topographic Mapping ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Grid Points

As life expectancy increases, the number of people who suffer from blind and visual impairment due to presbyopia is gradually increasing. Assistive device systems have been used to overcome various physical, social, infrastructure, and accessibility barriers. As technology has advanced, the scope of assistive technologies has been expanded. Therefore, we explored technological opportunities in assistive technology for the blind and visually impaired to establish a strategy for the technology competition in the near future. Firstly, the patent vacuum is detected by generating the patent map based on generative topographic mapping (GTM). Secondly, social network analysis is applied to identify the relationship between patent vacuums and occupied grid points in the patent map. Finally, the technology activity index and technology impact index are considered at quantitative and qualitative levels. Consequently, it was identified that wearable devices, including the road situation signal acquisition module and data acquisition process control module, could be occupied in the future. This study can provide practical ideas for research and development (R&D) in the field of assistive devices for the blind and visually impaired. In addition, this study can be an ample source for decision/policy makers to project new contents.

Mesh Network of eHealth Intelligent Agents for Visually Impaired and Blind People

2022 ◽  
pp. 240-271
Author(s):  
Dmytro Zubov
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Assistive Devices ◽  
Mesh Network ◽  
Assistive Device ◽  
Raspberry Pi ◽  
Industrial Facilities ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Human Faces

Smart assistive devices for blind and visually impaired (B&VI) people are of high interest today since wearable IoT hardware became available for a wide range of users. In the first project, the Raspberry Pi 3 B board measures a distance to the nearest obstacle via ultrasonic sensor HC-SR04 and recognizes human faces by Pi camera, OpenCV library, and Adam Geitgey module. Objects are found by Bluetooth devices of classes 1-3 and iBeacons. Intelligent eHealth agents cooperate with one another in a smart city mesh network via MQTT and BLE protocols. In the second project, B&VIs are supported to play golf. Golf flagsticks have sound marking devices with a buzzer, NodeMcu Lua ESP8266 ESP-12 WiFi board, and WiFi remote control. In the third project, an assistive device supports the orientation of B&VIs by measuring the distance to obstacles via Arduino Uno and HC-SR04. The distance is pronounced through headphones. In the fourth project, the soft-/hardware complex uses Raspberry Pi 3 B and Bytereal iBeacon fingerprinting to uniquely identify the B&VI location at industrial facilities.

Usability assessment of assistive technology for blind and visually impaired

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Dascalu ◽  
Alin Moldoveanu ◽  
Oana Balan ◽  
Robert Gabriel Lupu ◽  
Florina Ungureanu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Assistive Technology ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Usability Assessment

scholarly journals VES: A Mixed-Reality System to Assist Multisensory Spatial Perception and Cognition for Blind and Visually Impaired People

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 523
Author(s):  
Santiago Real ◽  
Alvaro Araujo
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Mixed Reality ◽  
Spatial Perception ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Sensory Substitution ◽  
Blind And Visually Impaired ◽  
Outdoor Environments ◽  
Acoustic Space ◽  
Indoor And Outdoor Environments

In this paper, the Virtually Enhanced Senses (VES) System is described. It is an ARCore-based, mixed-reality system meant to assist blind and visually impaired people’s navigation. VES operates in indoor and outdoor environments without any previous in-situ installation. It provides users with specific, runtime-configurable stimuli according to their pose, i.e., position and orientation, and the information of the environment recorded in a virtual replica. It implements three output data modalities: Wall-tracking assistance, acoustic compass, and a novel sensory substitution algorithm, Geometry-based Virtual Acoustic Space (GbVAS). The multimodal output of this algorithm takes advantage of natural human perception encoding of spatial data. Preliminary experiments of GbVAS have been conducted with sixteen subjects in three different scenarios, demonstrating basic orientation and mobility skills after six minutes training.

An Assistive Device to Aid the Visually Impaired to Play Basketball

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Murnyack ◽  
Khristi Viktoriany ◽  
Ajmal Sediqe ◽  
Waiseng Chong ◽  
Mohamed Samir Hefzy
Keyword(s):  
Assistive Technology ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Assistive Device ◽  
Portable System ◽  
Impaired Person ◽  
Goal System

Abstract The purpose of this project is to allow a visually impaired person to enjoy playing the sport of basketball in his/her driveway or yard. The project required adapting a portable basketball goal system so that a visually impaired person can experience this sport. The assistive technology developed consisted of instrumenting the pole with a custom built beacon to allow the person to know where the portable system is located, thus determining in which direction to shoot the basketball. The beacon, mounted on the pole, emits a continuous distinct beeping sound. Also, the hoop was instrumented with a sensor that allows the person to know if he/she makes a basket. A sound is triggered to signal when the basketball passes though the hoop successfully. Furthermore, the hoop was custom sized to increase the odds of making a basket.

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