Open AccessMOBILITY OF BLIND PEOPLE USING THE SMARTPHONE’S GPS AND A WEARABLE TACTILE DISPLAY
Author(s) -
Ramiro Velázquez Guerrero,
Edwige Pissaloux,
Carolina Del Valle Soto,
Miguel Carrasco,
Abraham Mendoza Andrade,
Jorge Varona Salazar
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
dyna
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.177
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1989-1490
pISSN - 0012-7361
DOI - 10.6036/9635
Subject(s) - wearable computer , global positioning system , computer science , task (project management) , tactile display , human–computer interaction , computer vision , engineering , embedded system , telecommunications , systems engineering
This paper presents a novel wearable system devoted to assist the mobility of blind and visually impaired people in urban environments with the simple use of a smartphone and tactile feedback. The system exploits the positioning data provided by the smartphone’s GPS sensor to locate in real-time the user in the environment and to determine the directions to a destination. The resulting navigational directions are encoded as vibrations and conveyed to the user via an on-shoe tactile display. To validate the pertinence of the proposed system, two experiments were conducted with test users. The first one involved a group of 20 voluntary normally sighted subjects that were requested to recognize the navigational instructions displayed by the tactile-foot device. The results show high recognition rates for the task. The second experiment consisted of guiding two blind voluntary subjects along public urban spaces to target destinations. Results show that the task was successfully accomplished and suggest that the system enhances independent safe navigation of visually impaired and blind people. Moreover, results show the potentials of smartphones and tactile-foot devices in assistive technology.Keywords: assistive technology, GPS localization, mobility of blind people, tactile-foot stimulation, vibrotactile display, wearable system.