Virtual mobility trainer for visually impaired people

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Koutny, Reinhard^{; *} | Miesenberger, Klaus

Affiliations: Institute Integrated Study of the JKU, Linz, Austria

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Reinhard Koutny, Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria. Tel.: +43 732 2468 3761; Fax: +43 732 246 23761; E-mail: reinhard.koutny@jku.at.

Abstract: This paper presents a prototype [1] of a location-based and context aware system supporting blind and visually impaired people to improve their mobility skills and in particular enhancing traditional mobility training. The system supports annotating pre-defined routes with information provided in standard mobility training sessions for blind people. This allows later on to reuse the information provided in a person to person session and even to share this expertise with other people. People in need of knowing by heart a certain route can go back to the stored mobility training information to better remember and learn how to manage this route independently. The virtual mobility trainer allows making repeatedly, time independent and location-based use of information provided from a human instructor. This paper presents a first prototype which allows designing routes, accessible to blind and visually impaired people so that it can be used for mobility training. Furthermore, this tool allows performing advanced orientation tasks assisting blind people in an unknown environment. The Digital Graffiti framework [9] was used as underlying framework, which supports the needed annotation of maps with virtual landmarks.

Keywords: Assistive technology, mobility training, navigation, localization

DOI: 10.3233/TAD-140420

Journal: Technology and Disability, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 211-219, 2014