The project is intended to accomplish five main objectives in terms of its potential for technical innovation and commercial application in the field of navigation aid for blind or visually impaired persons.

1) to provide a navigational aid that can track the location of a blind person anywhere, including areas where a global positioning system (GPS) is not available or not reliable (e.g., indoors, in urban areas with tall buildings, etc.)

2) to look ahead in time and space to plan a route that allows a visually impaired person to get to a destination, then to adaptively update the route based on vision system recognized obstacles that are to be avoided, such as people or construction within the path (a concept known in robotics as Event Horizon)

3) to take gestural input and provide natural route guidance based on tactile stimuli (instead of relying solely on auditory or visual instructions)

4) to use computer vision techniques to verify that the user has reached the correct destination, as well as to find stairs, elevators (buttons), hallways, and doors in the visual scope to help with navigation

5) to take input from and provide input to intelligent traffic systems (for example, the ability to communicate with drivers to send them alerts when they are getting close to a blind person who is crossing the street)

Goals:

To develop a navigation aid for people with vision disabilities that will increase their mobility by providing them with spatial awareness for long path-planning and guidance.

• Exploratory Advanced Research

• FY 2002-2022 / Exploratory Advanced Research