AN OVERVIEW OF ASSISTIVE DEVICES FOR BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE

Across the world, there are approximately 253 million people with vision impairments, and assistive devices have constantly been in demand. Advanced research has led to the development of numerous assistive devices for blind people and visually impaired people (VIP) to improve their quality of life. An overview of these different types of assistive devices such as canes, glasses, hats and gloves is presented in this survey. A FCBPSS (F: function, C: context, B: behaviour, P: principle, S: state, S: structure) architecture of visual impairment assistance system is preliminarily proposed to allow other researchers to design the assistive devices with the good experience and the high performance for blind people and VIPs in the future. As VIPs and blind people may have different behaviour patterns, a criterion for classifying different types of vision impairments is presented. Subsequently, we classify the substitutive senses for visual perception into five categories: vision enhancement, audition, somatosense, visual prosthesis, and olfactory and gustation. Two commonly used feedback forms, namely audition and vibration, are elaborated. Based on literature survey, we also present a summary prospective of the development of assistive devices: add more sensing and feedback modules, use the knowledge of perception mechanism and behaviour pattern as the design guideline and design more reliable validation experiments.