Visual shoreline detection for blind and partially sighted people

Abstract

Currently existing navigation and guidance systems do not properly address special guidance aides, such as the widely used white cane. Therefore, we propose a novel shoreline location system that detects and tracks possible shorelines from a user’s perspective in an urban scenario. Our approach uses three dimensional scene information acquired from a stereo camera and can potentially inform a user of available shorelines as well as obstacles that are blocking an otherwise clear shoreline path, and thus help in shorelining. We evaluate two different algorithmic approaches on two different datasets, showing promising results. We aim to improve a user’s scene understanding by providing relevant scene information and to help in the creation of a mental map of nearby guidance tasks. This can be especially helpful in reaching the next available shoreline in yet unknown locations, e.g., at an intersection or a drive-way. Also, knowledge of available shorelines can be integrated into routing and guidance systems and vice versa.