Augmented reality application for the navigation of people who are blind

Abstract A person who is blind can be capable of locating objects and also other people, such as a sighted person, by using audio cues alone. In this research we present the design, development and evaluation of ARTAB (Augmented Reality Tags for Assisting the Blind), a technological assistant for people who are blind, which uses Augmented Reality to identify a set of objects in an indoor environment. As a result, we generated audio-based representations that allow a user to determine the position of an object relative to the angle of vision of the video capture device for navigation purposes. The usability testing performed allowed us to detect that it is not trivial to assign sound effects so that the variation of such effects would imply changes in the position of an object. The continual variation of the sound pitch does not generate the contrast necessary for the user who is blind to be able to obtain a certain kind of information. However, users generally perceive ARTAB as a useful tool for assisting orientation and mobility tasks.

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