Virtual-Blind-Road Following-Based Wearable Navigation Device for Blind People

To help the blind people walk to the destination efficiently and safely in indoor environment, a novel wearable navigation device is presented in this paper. The locating, way-finding, route following, and obstacle avoiding modules are the essential components in a navigation system, while it remains a challenging task to consider obstacle avoiding during route following, as the indoor environment is complex, changeable, and possibly with dynamic objects. To address this issue, we propose a novel scheme which utilizes a dynamic subgoal selecting strategy to guide the users to the destination and help them bypass obstacles at the same time. This scheme serves as the key component of a complete navigation system deployed on a pair of wearable optical see-through glasses for the ease of use of blind people’s daily walks. The proposed navigation device has been tested on a collection of individuals and proved to be effective on indoor navigation tasks. The sensors embedded are of low cost, small volume, and easy integration, making it possible for the glasses to be widely used as a wearable consumer device.

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