A Vision-Based Wayfinding System for Visually Impaired People Using Situation Awareness and Activity-Based Instructions
Visual Information Processing Laboratory, Konkuk University, Seoul 05029, Korea
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Sensors 2017, 17(8), 1882; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081882
Received: 8 July 2017
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Revised: 31 July 2017
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Accepted: 8 August 2017
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Published: 16 August 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Smartphone-based Pedestrian Localization and Navigation)
A significant challenge faced by visually impaired people is ‘wayfinding’, which is the ability to find one’s way to a destination in an unfamiliar environment. This study develops a novel wayfinding system for smartphones that can automatically recognize the situation and scene objects in real time. Through analyzing streaming images, the proposed system first classifies the current situation of a user in terms of their location. Next, based on the current situation, only the necessary context objects are found and interpreted using computer vision techniques. It estimates the motions of the user with two inertial sensors and records the trajectories of the user toward the destination, which are also used as a guide for the return route after reaching the destination. To efficiently convey the recognized results using an auditory interface, activity-based instructions are generated that guide the user in a series of movements along a route. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed system, experiments were conducted in several indoor environments: the sit in which the situation awareness accuracy was 90% and the object detection false alarm rate was 0.016. In addition, our field test results demonstrate that users can locate their paths with an accuracy of 97%.
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Keywords:
wayfinding system; visually impaired people; situation awareness; activity-based instruction; user trajectory recording
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MDPI and ACS Style
Ko, E.; Kim, E.Y. A Vision-Based Wayfinding System for Visually Impaired People Using Situation Awareness and Activity-Based Instructions. Sensors 2017, 17, 1882. https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081882
AMA Style
Ko E, Kim EY. A Vision-Based Wayfinding System for Visually Impaired People Using Situation Awareness and Activity-Based Instructions. Sensors. 2017; 17(8):1882. https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081882
Chicago/Turabian StyleKo, Eunjeong, and Eun Yi Kim. 2017. "A Vision-Based Wayfinding System for Visually Impaired People Using Situation Awareness and Activity-Based Instructions" Sensors 17, no. 8: 1882. https://doi.org/10.3390/s17081882
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