A Navigation Aid for Blinds Using Stereo Vision and Vibrotactile Interface

The population of visually impaired people is increasing rapidly in India as well as in world. Many electronic travel aids for vision substitution in blinds were introduced in past twenty years. However, India is still lacking a realistic and low cost commercial solution that can provide portability and ease of use. This paper is aimed at discussing one such practical approach to building a real-time navigation aid for blinds while explaining our custom built research prototype. The vision substitution prototype discussed in this paper consists of a stereo vision based range finding system to detect obstacles, a bind computer interface built using vibrotactile interface for real time interactions with the user and a processing unit for meaningful transformation of obstacle distances into vibration alerts. This paper will discuss both hardware construction and software implementation along with various testing and experimentation scenarios that were carried out to validate the applicability of this prototype.