Indoor visual mapping and navigation for blind people

Abstract

Admittedly, machine vision-based assistive applications are beneficial for blind and visually impaired (BVI) persons. Such a need has numerous already implemented outdoor assistive solutions. However, there are much less effective solutions for indoor navigation and orientation. It is due to the absence of GPS signals and the need for infrastructural investments (such as WI-FI signals, beamers, RFID tags). In this paper, we present another way - a wearable electronic traveling aid (ETA) system for the BVI persons using outsourcing, i.e., volunteers’ mapping of buildings indoor routes. Volunteers use the proposed wearable ETA device to record indoor routes stored in the web cloud database using web services. Smartphones’ IMU and other sensors, stereo and depth camera, audio and haptic devices, computer vision algorithms, and computational intelligence are employed for objects detection and recognition, and consequently, intelligent routing and mapping of indoor spaces. Integration of semantic data of points of interest (such as stairs, doors, WC, entrances/exits) and building (evacuation) schemes makes the proposed approach even more attractive to the BVI users. The presented approach can also be employed to crowdsourcing real-time help in complex navigational situations such as dead reckoning, avoiding various obstacles, or unforeseen situations.