A review on path selection and navigation approaches towards an assisted mobility of visually impaired people

Abstract

Some things come easily to humans, one of them is the ability to navigate around. This capability of navigation suffers significantly in case of partial or complete blindness, restricting life activity. Advances in the technological landscape have given way to new solutions aiding navigation for the visually impaired. In this paper, we analyze the existing works and identify the challenges of path selection, context awareness, obstacle detection/identification and integration of visual and nonvisual information associated with real-time assisted mobility. In the process, we explore machine learning approaches for robotic path planning, multi constrained optimal path computation and sensor based wearable assistive devices for the visually impaired. It is observed that the solution to problem is complex and computationally intensive and significant effort is required towards the development of richer and comfortable paths for safe and smooth navigation of visually impaired people. We cannot overlook to explore more effective strategies of acquiring surrounding information towards autonomous mobility.