Indoor vision-based auditory assistance for blind people in semi controlled environments

This paper presents an indoor auditory navigation system for blind and visually impaired people using computer vision based approach. In our approach, fiducial markers augmented with audio information are placed in the environment. The blind user holds a webcam attached to the system in his/her hand and navigates through the environment. The audio assistance is provided to the user whenever a particular marker is detected by the camera and thus enables him/her to independently navigate in the environment. The proposed navigation system provides two types of guidance (1) free mode guidance (2) targeted mode guidance. In the free mode guidance, the user navigates freely in the prepared environment and the system informs him/her about his/her current position through the audio information about the surrounding based on the detected marker. In the targeted mode guidance the user is guided from a source (current) position to his/her desired destination in the environment through the shortest path. Five blind users evaluated the system (both modes) in a semi controlled environment. The results obtained from the experiments indicate that the proposed system is successful in assisting blind users inside a huge and complex building. In addition the solution is low cost and gives high accuracy rate.