Design and development of an indoor navigation and object identification system for the blind

In this paper we present a new system that assists blind users in orienting themselves in indoor environments. We developed a sensor module that can be handled like a flashlight by a blind user and can be used for searching tasks within the three-dimensional environment. By pressing keys, inquiries concerning object characteristics, position, orientation and navigation can be sent to a connected portable computer, or to a federation of data servers providing models of the environment. Finally these inquiries are acoustically answered over a text-to-speech engine.