RFID navigation and guidance system (NGS) for the visually impaired

Abstract

Navigation is difficult for the visually impaired. The difficulties of navigation are mainly caused by lack of context information of environment. This report describes an indoor location-sensing and navigation system using a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag grid. Upon installation, each RFID tag is correlated with spatial coordinates and information describing the environment. This allows for a flexible localized information system that can be modified upon changes. The system is an RFID based information grid system with a RFID reader mounted on user's white cane, which is connected to the user PDA and central system via wireless network. With this system, blind or visually impaired people will gain the independence to explore without external help. This report includes discussion about RFID based information grid system. By building a prototype of the system, the project evaluates this concept and its related technologies. The prototype could serve as an example application for future RFID based positioning application development.