Haptic and spatial audio based navigation of visually impaired users in virtual environment using low cost devices

Abstract

The use of haptic peripherals to mediate spatial information to visually impaired users is a problem which has recently been examined thoroughly, however the main issue of almost all current approaches is the use of custom made peripheral devices, the high cost of which renders their massive deployment infeasible. We have focused on using low-cost haptic devices to allow visually impaired users to navigate in and inspect a virtual environment. In this paper we describe our approach to navigation in virtual environments by using force feedback joystick and haptic mouse. We also employ the spatial sound to enhance the information perception. We discuss two different navigation modes of avatar in the virtual environment (joystick and mouse based) and several information mediation techniques. Numerous tests have also been performed. Results show that the efficiency and usability of our solution is comparable with tactile exploration of physical paper models of an environment. © Springer-Verlag 2004.