Smart Cane Outdoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired Deaf-blind and Blind Persons

Abstract

This paper presents prototype of an outdoor navigation system designed to assist visually impaired (VI) and blind persons in outdoor navigation. It assists VI persons in moving independently on sidewalks in urban areas using an augmented guidance cane and informs them about points of interests (POI) through serialized braille encoded vibrational guidance messages. Augmented guidance cane, magnet points’ trail, metallic trail, and pulsing magnet apparatus for transmission of serialized braille encoded guidance messages in the form of vibration are the features of the proposed navigation system. Magnet points’ trail, metallic trail, and pulsing magnet apparatuses will be installed on the special sidewalks for the visually impaired persons in city centers. VI persons will be able to sense magnet points’ trail or metallic trail through augmented guidance cane. It will assist them to walk independently being oriented on the sidewalks. Pulsing magnet apparatuses will be installed at the verge of the POIs on the sidewalks. VI persons will be able to sense the serialized braille vibrational messages through augmented guidance cane and become aware of the POI. Numbers of usability experiments are designed to evaluate the usability of the proposed system in qualitative interviews sessions. It is expected that the results of the qualitative interviews and the test sessions will provide valuable information to make this prototype a full- fledged system ready to be deployed.