Virtual Mobility Trainer for Visually Impaired People

Description

Navigation and orientation are crucial activities of human beings which need to be achieved daily. The usual way to perform these tasks require the visual sense, which is used to recognize known places and buildings or rather signs and structures which are familiar to the person. This could be the sign indicating a bus stop or a store of a known supermarket chain. People suffering from visual diseases have problems using this technique. Therefore orientation and mobility (O&M) training is a well-proven method to allow blind or visually impaired people to handle their everyday life on their own. This training basically consists of getting to know the environment and assistance in correctly appraising certain situations. At this, practicing the best way to work or the next supermarket and avoiding dangerous situations are of utmost importance. A mobility and orientation instructor performs these trainings, which is sometimes costly in terms of time and money. This paper presents an approach which focuses on a partly replacement of the human instructor. In particular we present a framework to design routes, which are accessible to blind and visually impaired so that it can be used for mobility training. Furthermore, this tool allows performing advanced orientation tasks assisting blind people in an unknown environment. We use the digital graffiti framework as base, which provides basic capabilities for setting virtual landmarks.

Period	21 Sept 2013
Event title	Virtual Mobility Trainer for Visually Impaired People
Event type	Conference
Location	PortugalShow on map