Hi all,
hope all are doing fine
pasting below article, which get from another list.
Regards
Wahid
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Scientists design indoor navigation system for blind
May 18, 2012
Enlarge
Human-computer interaction researcher Eelke Folmer of the University
of Nevada, Reno, watches as Dora Uchel, a university student,
demonstrates the indoor navigation system for the visually impaired
developed by Kostas Bekris and Folmer of the Computer Science
Engineering Department. She was one of several visually impaired
students and community members who helped test the low-cost accessible
system that operates with a standard smartphone. Credit: Photo by Mike
Wolterbeek, University of Nevada, Reno
University of Nevada, Reno computer science engineering team Kostas
Bekris and Eelke Folmer presented their indoor navigation system for
people with visual impairments at two national conferences in the past
two weeks. The researchers explained how a combination of
human-computer interaction and motion-planning research was used to
build a low-cost accessible navigation system, called Navatar, which
can run on a standard smartphone.
"Existing indoor navigation systems typically require the use of
expensive and heavy sensors, or equipping rooms and hallways with
radio-frequency tags that can be detected by a handheld reader and
which are used to determine the user's location," Bekris, of the
College of Engineering's Robotics Research Lab, said. "This has often
made the implementation of such systems prohibitively expensive, with
few systems having been deployed."
Instead, the University of Nevada, Reno navigation system uses digital
2D architectural maps that are already available for many buildings,
and uses low-cost sensors, such as accelerometers and compasses, that
are available in most smartphones, to navigate users with visual
impairments. The system locates and tracks the user inside the
building, finding the most suitable path based on the users special
needs, and gives step-by-step instructions to the destination.
"Nevertheless, the smartphone's sensors, which are used to calculate
how many steps the user has executed and her orientation, tend to pick
up false signals," Folmer, who has developed exercise video games for
the blind, said. "To synchronize the location, our system combines
probabilistic algorithms and the natural capabilities of people with
visual impairments to detect landmarks in their environment through
touch, such as corridor intersections, doors, stairs and elevators."
Folmer explained that as touch screen devices are challenging to use
for users with visual impairments, directions are provided using
synthetic speech and users confirm the presence of a landmark by
verbal confirmation or by pressing a button on the phone or on a
Bluetooth headset. A benefit of this approach is that the user can
leave the phone in their pocket leaving both hands free for using a
cane and recognizing tactile landmarks.
"This is a very cool mix of disciplines, using the user as a sensor
combined with sophisticated localization algorithms from the field of
robotics," Folmer, of the University's Computer Science Engineering
Human-Computer Interaction Lab, said.
The team is currently trying to implement their navigation system in
other environments and integrate it into outdoor navigation systems
that use GPS.
"My research is motivated by the belief that a disability can be
turned into an innovation driver," Folmer said. "When we try to solve
interaction design problems for the most extreme users, such as users
with visual impairments, there is the potential to discover solutions
that may benefit anyone. Though the navigation system was specifically
developed for users with visual impairments, it can be used by sighted
users as well."
For their work on the indoor navigation system for the blind, Bekris
and Folmer recently won a PETA Proggy Award for Leadership in Ethical
Science. PETA's Proggy Awards ("Proggy" is for "progress") recognize
animal-friendly achievements. The navigation system was deemed such an
achievement because it could decrease the need to rely on guide dogs.
They presented and demonstrated their research at the IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St. Paul.,
Minn. on May 15 and on May 7 at the CM SIGCHI Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems, which is the premier international
conference on human-computer interaction.
More information: For more information on the system, visit
http://eelke.com/navatar
Provided by University of Nevada, Reno
-----
Search for old postings at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
To unsubscribe send a message to
[email protected]
with the subject unsubscribe.
To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please
visit the list home page at
http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
