Abstract
An electronic guidance system is very helpful in improving blind people’s perceptions in a local environment. In our previous work “Lin, Q.; Han, Y. A Context-Aware-Based Audio Guidance System for Blind People Using a Multimodal Profile Model. Sensors 2014, 14, 18670–18700”, a context-aware guidance system using a combination of a laser scanner and a camera was proposed. By using a near-field graphical model, the proposed system could interpret a near-field scene in very high resolution. In this paper, our work is extended by adding a far-field graphical model. The integration of the near-field and the far-field models constitutes a dual-field sensing scheme. In the near-field range, reliable inference of the ground and object status is obtained by fusing range data and image data using the near-field graphical model. In the far-field range, which only the camera can cover, the far-field graphical model is proposed to interpret far-field image data based on appearance and spatial prototypes built using the near-field interpreted data. The dual-field sensing scheme provides a solution for the guidance systems to optimise their scene interpretation capability using simple sensor configurations. Experiments under various local conditions were conducted to show the efficiency of the proposed scheme in improving blind people’s perceptions in urban environments.
Highlights
Electronic travel aid (ETA) devices [1] are very helpful for blind people when they traverse a local environment
The dual-field sensing scheme provides a solution for the guidance systems to optimise their scene interpretation capability using simple sensor configurations
The block from the near field contains two pavement bricks, while the block from the FAST detector is customised for the ground appearance in our application, it can detect corner-like far field includes almost 10 bricks of similar size
Summary
Electronic travel aid (ETA) devices [1] are very helpful for blind people when they traverse a local environment. (2) increase interpretation resolution in each scale dimension To achieve these goals, we propose an ETA sensing system that only uses a two-dimensional (2D) laser scanner and a camera that are fixed on a human waist [23]. The near-field graphical model that requires data from both laser and camera can only be applied in this near-field range This limited interpretation scale in the forward dimension can cause trouble in searching for the best walking direction and may even lead to dead ends during guidance. Limited knowledge in the forward dimension makes it difficult to predict the overall walking context [23] properly, which may result in some misleading guidance behaviours To solve these problems, a far-field graphical model is proposed in this paper to extend the interpretation scale in the forward dimension. A walking context estimation and message delivery strategy is designed to provide intelligent guidance service based on the dual-field sensing scheme
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
