Navigation System for Visually Impaired Pedestrians

Abstract

Hong Kong has promoted barrier-free facilities for many years. These facilities may not necessarily address the needs of people with disabilities. Instead, it added a lot of challenges to them. Among the various disabled people, visually impaired people must use most of these facilities. But these facilities have not brought them convenience. For example, electronic audible traffic signal is not useful in noisy road. And it is extremely difficult to find a vibrating unit. Moreover, many shopping malls lack support for the visually impaired. They are easy to get lost when they stay inside the building. Although some organizations tried to make various types of systems to solve these problems, these system design and operation are difficult for visually impaired user to use. Also, some functions are not perfect and complete. This project aims to provide a voice navigation system for visually impaired which combine object detection, indoor positioning technique. And it contains 3 important features. 1. Traffic light signal detection 2. Guide path direction detection 3. Indoor navigation In order to support indoor navigation function, another system “Map system” is built for shopping mall staff to record shopping mall information. In addition, staff can use the system to monitor visually impaired user location in building.