Recent advances in mobile technology have the potential to radically change the quality of tools available for people with sensory impairments, in particular the blind and partially sighted. Nowadays almost every smart-phone and tablet is equipped with high-resolution cameras, typically used for photos, videos, games and virtual reality applications. Very little has been proposed to exploit these sensors for user localisation and navigation instead. To this end, the "Active Vision with Human-in-the-Loop for the Visually Impaired" (ActiVis) project aims to develop a novel electronic travel aid to tackle the "last 10 yards problem" and enable blind users to independently navigate in unknown environments, ultimately enhancing or replacing existing solutions such as guide dogs and white canes. This paper describes some of the project's key challenges, in particular with respect to the design of a user interface (UI) that translates visual information from the camera to guidance instructions for the blind person, taking into account the limitations introduced by visual impairment. In this paper we also propose a multimodal UI that caters to the needs of the visually impaired that exploits human-machine progressive co-adaptation to enhance the user's experience and improve navigation performance.
A portable navigation system with an adaptive multimodal interface for the blind
Bellotto N.
2017
Abstract
Recent advances in mobile technology have the potential to radically change the quality of tools available for people with sensory impairments, in particular the blind and partially sighted. Nowadays almost every smart-phone and tablet is equipped with high-resolution cameras, typically used for photos, videos, games and virtual reality applications. Very little has been proposed to exploit these sensors for user localisation and navigation instead. To this end, the "Active Vision with Human-in-the-Loop for the Visually Impaired" (ActiVis) project aims to develop a novel electronic travel aid to tackle the "last 10 yards problem" and enable blind users to independently navigate in unknown environments, ultimately enhancing or replacing existing solutions such as guide dogs and white canes. This paper describes some of the project's key challenges, in particular with respect to the design of a user interface (UI) that translates visual information from the camera to guidance instructions for the blind person, taking into account the limitations introduced by visual impairment. In this paper we also propose a multimodal UI that caters to the needs of the visually impaired that exploits human-machine progressive co-adaptation to enhance the user's experience and improve navigation performance.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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