WADER: a novel wayfinding system with deviation recovery for individuals with cognitive impairments

Difficulties in wayfinding hamper the quality of life of many individuals with cognitive impairments who are otherwise physically mobile. For example, an adult with mental disorder may want to lead a more independent life and be capable of getting trained and keeping employed, but may experience difficulty in using public transportation to and from the workplace. Remaining oriented in indoor spaces may also pose a challenge, for example, in an office building, a shopping mall, or a hospital where GPS devices fail to work due to scarce coverage of satellite signals. In addition, the state of art displaying positions on the navigational interfaces has not taken into consideration the needs of people with mental disabilities. A novel QR Code wayfinding system is presented in this research to increase work and life independence for cognitive-impaired patients such as people with traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease.