Abstract
We introduce PERCEPT system, an indoor navigation system for the blind and visually impaired. PERCEPT will improve the quality of life and health of the visually impaired community by enabling independent living. Using PERCEPT, blind users will have independent access to public health facilities such as clinics, hospitals, and wellness centers. Access to healthcare facilities is crucial for this population due to the multiple health conditions that they face such as diabetes and its complications. PERCEPT system trials with 24 blind and visually impaired users in a multistory building show PERCEPT system effectiveness in providing appropriate navigation instructions to these users. The uniqueness of our system is that it is affordable and that its design follows orientation and mobility principles. We hope that PERCEPT will become a standard deployed in all indoor public spaces, especially in healthcare and wellness facilities.
Highlights
The World Health Organization (2010) reported that globally the number of people of all ages visually impaired is estimated to be 285 million, of whom 39 million are blind [1]
Based on data from the 2004 National Health Interview Survey, 61 million Americans are considered to be at high risk of serious vision loss if they have diabetes, had a vision problem, or are over the age of 65 [2]
In this paper we introduce PERCEPT system that provides enhanced perception of the indoor environment using passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags deployed in the environment, a custom-designed handheld unit and Smartphone carried by the user, and PERCEPT server that generates and stores the building information and the RFID tags deployment
Summary
The World Health Organization (2010) reported that globally the number of people of all ages visually impaired is estimated to be 285 million, of whom 39 million are blind [1]. There has been research to provide navigation information to the blind and visually impaired users both indoors and outdoors [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20]. While most of these systems cover a wide range of functions, the end devices are complex and expensive, and none of these studies employed orientation and mobility (O&M) principles at the core of the system design. Developers can only overlay data onto Google maps but cannot get access to their databases, information required to develop an indoor navigation system for the blind and visually impaired.
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