A Support system for visually impaired persons to understand environmental information using Acoustic Interface

Abstract

Visually impaired find their navigation difficult as they often lack the needed information for bypassing obstacles and hazards. Electronic Travel Aids (ETAs) are devices that use sensor technology to assist and improve the blind user’s mobility in terms of safety and speed. Current ETAs does not provide distance information directly and clearly. This paper proposes a method for determining distance using a stereo matching method to help blind individuals for their navigation. The system developed in this work, named SVETA, consists of a computing device, stereo cameras and stereo earphones molded in a helmet. Area based stereo matching is performed over the transformed images to calculate dense disparity image. The disparity image is then post filtered to remove the noises and to highlight the obstacles. Experimentations have been conducted and preliminary investigations have proven the viability of this method for applying in real time environment.