VES: A Mixed-Reality Development Platform of Navigation Systems for Blind and Visually Impaired

Herein, we describe the Virtually Enhanced Senses (VES) system, a novel and highly configurable wireless sensor-actuator network conceived as a development and test-bench platform of navigation systems adapted for blind and visually impaired people. It allows to immerse its users into “walkable” purely virtual or mixed environments with simulated sensors and validate navigation system designs prior to prototype development. The haptic, acoustic, and proprioceptive feedback supports state-of-art sensory substitution devices (SSD). In this regard, three SSD were integrated in VES as examples, including the well-known “The vOICe”. Additionally, the data throughput, latency and packet loss of the wireless communication can be controlled to observe its impact in the provided spatial knowledge and resulting mobility and orientation performance. Finally, the system has been validated by testing a combination of two previous visual-acoustic and visual-haptic sensory substitution schemas with 23 normal-sighted subjects. The recorded data includes the output of a “gaze-tracking” utility adapted for SSD.

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A Systematic Review of Urban Navigation Systems for Visually Impaired People

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s21093103 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (9) ◽

pp. 3103

Author(s):

Fatma El-zahraa El-taher ◽

Ayman Taha ◽

Jane Courtney ◽

Susan Mckeever

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Visually Impaired ◽

The Body ◽

Research Progress ◽

Navigation Systems ◽

Learning Approaches ◽

Blind And Visually Impaired ◽

Visually Impaired People ◽

Impaired People ◽

Structured Analysis

Blind and Visually impaired people (BVIP) face a range of practical difficulties when undertaking outdoor journeys as pedestrians. Over the past decade, a variety of assistive devices have been researched and developed to help BVIP navigate more safely and independently. In addition, research in overlapping domains are addressing the problem of automatic environment interpretation using computer vision and machine learning, particularly deep learning, approaches. Our aim in this article is to present a comprehensive review of research directly in, or relevant to, assistive outdoor navigation for BVIP. We breakdown the navigation area into a series of navigation phases and tasks. We then use this structure for our systematic review of research, analysing articles, methods, datasets and current limitations by task. We also provide an overview of commercial and non-commercial navigation applications targeted at BVIP. Our review contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a comprehensive, structured analysis of work in the domain, including the state of the art, and guidance on future directions. It will support both researchers and other stakeholders in the domain to establish an informed view of research progress.

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

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app10020523 ◽

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.

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Double-Diamond Model-Based Orientation Guidance in Wearable Human–Machine Navigation Systems for Blind and Visually Impaired People

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s19214670 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 19 (21) ◽

pp. 4670

Author(s):

Xiaochen Zhang ◽

Hui Zhang ◽

Linyue Zhang ◽

Yi Zhu ◽

Fei Hu

Keyword(s):

Visually Impaired ◽

Spatial Perception ◽

Tactile Feedback ◽

Navigation Systems ◽

Analysis And Design ◽

Blind And Visually Impaired ◽

Visually Impaired People ◽

Impaired People ◽

Double Diamond ◽

Path Planner

This paper presents the analysis and design of a new, wearable orientation guidance device in modern travel aid systems for blind and visually impaired people. The four-stage double-diamond design model was applied in the design process to achieve human-centric innovation and to ensure technical feasibility and economic viability. Consequently, a sliding tactile feedback wristband was designed and prototyped. Furthermore, a Bezier curve-based adaptive path planner is proposed to guarantee collision-free planned motion. Proof-of-concept experiments on both virtual and real-world scenarios are conducted. The evaluation results confirmed the efficiency and feasibility of the design and imply the design’s remarkable potential in spatial perception rehabilitation.

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Mobile Edge Computing based Mixed Reality Application for the Assistance of Blind and Visually Impaired People

2019 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICoICT) ◽

10.1109/icoict.2019.8835341 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Arifa Akter ◽

Anik Islam ◽

Soo Young Shin

Keyword(s):

Visually Impaired ◽

Mixed Reality ◽

Edge Computing ◽

Mobile Edge Computing ◽

Blind And Visually Impaired ◽

Visually Impaired People ◽

Impaired People

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Use of Tactile Maps by Blind and Visually Impaired People

Cartographic Perspectives ◽

10.14714/cp28.686 ◽

1997 ◽

pp. 4-12 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Simon Ungar ◽

Angeles Espinosa Bayal ◽

Mark Blades ◽

Espernaza Ochaita ◽

Christopher Spencer

Keyword(s):

Reading Strategies ◽

Visually Impaired ◽

Instructional Methods ◽

Spatial Knowledge ◽

Verbal Description ◽

Map Reading ◽

Blind And Visually Impaired ◽

Visually Impaired People ◽

Impaired People ◽

Tactile Maps

Most research on tactile maps has focused on aspects of map design and methods of construction. Relatively little attention has been paid to theway in which blind and visually impaired people actually use tactile maps for everyday way finding tasks. This paper reports on studies carried out in Madrid and Sheffield which consider how people gain spatial knowledge from tactile maps. In the Madrid study, participants were introduced to an urban area by one of three instructional methods: direct experience, tactile map or verbal description. Those who learned the area with the map were considerably more proficient in following the route unguided than were participants who received the other two instructional methods. However the different methods had little effect on the participants' overall representation of the space. It is possible that the map reading strategies used by the participants were effective for gaining practical route-based knowledge but did not give the participants an overall spatial representation of the area. To explore this possibility further, the Sheffield study considered the effect of individual differences in map reading strategies on the type of mental representation which visually impaired people acquire from a tactile map. It was found that those participants who acquired an accurate and full representation of the map used different map learning strategies from those who performed less well. We suggest implications of these studies for the education and rehabilitation of blind and visually impaired people.

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