A context-aware-based audio guidance system for blind people using a multimodal profile model

Sensors (Basel). 2014 Oct 9;14(10):18670-700. doi: 10.3390/s141018670.

Abstract

A wearable guidance system is designed to provide context-dependent guidance messages to blind people while they traverse local pathways. The system is composed of three parts: moving scene analysis, walking context estimation and audio message delivery. The combination of a downward-pointing laser scanner and a camera is used to solve the challenging problem of moving scene analysis. By integrating laser data profiles and image edge profiles, a multimodal profile model is constructed to estimate jointly the ground plane, object locations and object types, by using a Bayesian network. The outputs of the moving scene analysis are further employed to estimate the walking context, which is defined as a fuzzy safety level that is inferred through a fuzzy logic model. Depending on the estimated walking context, the audio messages that best suit the current context are delivered to the user in a flexible manner. The proposed system is tested under various local pathway scenes, and the results confirm its efficiency in assisting blind people to attain autonomous mobility.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Awareness
  • Bayes Theorem
  • Fuzzy Logic
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Visually Impaired Persons*
  • Walking*