Abstract
Sport is one of the best ways to promote the social integration of people affected by physical disability, because it helps them to increase their self-esteem by facing difficulties and overcoming their disabilities. Nowadays, a large number of sports can be easily played by visually impaired and blind athletes without any special supports, but, there are some disciplines that require the presence of a sighted guide. In this work, the attention will be focused on marathons, during which athletes with visual disorders have to be linked to the sighted guide by means of a non-stretchable elbow tether, with an evident reduction of their performance and autonomy. In this context, this paper presents a fixed electromagnetic infrastructure to equip a standard running racetrack in order to help a blind athlete to safely run without the presence of a sighted guide. The athlete runs inside an invisible hallway, just wearing a light and a comfortable sensor unit. The patented system has been homemade, designed, realized and finally tested by a blind Paralympic marathon champion with encouraging results and interesting suggestions for technical improvements. In this paper (Part I), the transmitting unit, whose main task is to generate the two magnetic fields that delimit the safe hallway, is presented and discussed.
Highlights
It is commonly known that a high level of fitness is associated with physical, social and mental well-being because it has a positive influence on many physical and psychological aspects of human life
We present an EM system developed and realized to allow a person with visual impairments to run along a racetrack completely free, without the need for a sighted guide
Fields in a stratified medium has been adopted, because it allows to account for the effects of the currents induced into the ground on the loop impedance value
Summary
It is commonly known that a high level of fitness is associated with physical, social and mental well-being because it has a positive influence on many physical and psychological aspects of human life. Significant efforts to remove the important barriers in everyday life have been made in designing smart Electronic Travel Aids able to assist the visually impaired during walking in indoor and outdoor unknown environments [4] Most of these devices are based on ultrasonic and optic sensors, but recent studies have demonstrated the possibility of using the electromagnetic (EM) technology to realize an efficient obstacle detection system, whose potential advantages with respect to the more traditional technologies have been investigated [5]. As with the system described above, a safe path is defined to let the athlete run autonomously, wearing a receiving device and following the vibro-tactile warnings generated by two sensors on his arms.
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