VIPEye: Architecture and prototype implementation of autonomous mobility for visually impaired people

Abstract

Comfortable movement of a visually impaired person in an unknown environment is non-trivial task due to complete or partial short-sightedness, absence of relevant information and unavailability of assistance from a non-impaired person. To fulfill the visual needs of an impaired person towards autonomous navigation, we utilize the concepts of graph mining and computer vision to produce a viable path guidance solution. We present an architectural perspective and a prototype implementation to determine safe & interesting path (SIP) from an arbitrary source to desired destination with intermediate way points, and guide visually impaired person through voice commands on that path. We also identify and highlight various challenging issues, that came up while developing a prototype solution, i.e. VIPEye-An Eye for Visually Impaired People, to this aforementioned problem, in terms of task's difficulty and availability of required resources or information. Moreover, this study provides candidate research directions for researchers, developers, and practitioners in the development of autonomous mobility services for visually impaired people.