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Blind navigation with a wearable range camera and vibrotactile helmet

Published: 28 November 2011 Publication History

Abstract

We present a way finding system that uses a range camera and an array of vibrotactile elements which we built into a helmet.
The range camera is a Kinect 3D sensor from Microsoft that is meant to be kept stationary, and used to watch the user (i.e., to detect the person's gestures). Rather than using the camera to look at the user, we reverse the situation, by putting the Kinect range camera on a helmet for being worn by the user. In our case, the Kinect is in motion rather than stationary.
Whereas stationary cameras have previously been used for gesture recognition, which the Kinect does very well, in our new modality, we take advantage of the Kinect's resilience against rapidly changing background scenery, where the background in our case is now in motion (i.e., a conventional wearable camera would be presented with a constantly changing background that is difficult to manage by mere background subtraction).
The goal of our project is collision avoidance for blind or visually impaired individuals, and for workers in harsh environments such as industrial environments with significant 3-dimensional obstacles, as well as for use in low-light environments.

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A. Shpunt and B. Pesach. OPTICAL PATTERN PROJECTION, July 21 2010. US Patent App. 12/840,312.
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A. Shpunt and Z. Zalevsky. Depth-varying light fields for three dimensional sensing, Mar. 13 2007. US Patent App. 11/724,068.
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E. Spektor, Z. Mor, and D. Rais. INTEGRATED PROCESSOR FOR 3D MAPPING, Mar. 4 2009. US Patent App. 12/397,362.
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E. Weber, H. Ross, and D. Murray. EH Weber on the tactile senses. Psychology Press, 1996.
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Wikipedia. Ros (robot operating system) -- wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2011. {Online; accessed 12-April-2011}.
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  • (2024)A Review Paper on AIoT as Vision Aid for Visually Impaired People2024 IEEE 9th International Conference for Convergence in Technology (I2CT)10.1109/I2CT61223.2024.10543443(1-4)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2024
  • (2022)Terrain Perception Using Wearable Parrot-Inspired Companion Robot, KiliRoBiomimetics10.3390/biomimetics70200817:2(81)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2022
  • (2022)Lifelog Retrieval From Daily Digital Data: Narrative ReviewJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/3051710:5(e30517)Online publication date: 2-May-2022
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cover image ACM Conferences
MM '11: Proceedings of the 19th ACM international conference on Multimedia
November 2011
944 pages
ISBN:9781450306164
DOI:10.1145/2072298
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 28 November 2011

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Author Tags

  1. blind navigation
  2. collision avoidance
  3. depth sensor
  4. microsoft kinect
  5. personal safety devices
  6. vibrotactile array
  7. vibrotactile helmet

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MM '11
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MM '11: ACM Multimedia Conference
November 28 - December 1, 2011
Arizona, Scottsdale, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 2,145 of 8,556 submissions, 25%

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Cited By

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  • (2024)A Review Paper on AIoT as Vision Aid for Visually Impaired People2024 IEEE 9th International Conference for Convergence in Technology (I2CT)10.1109/I2CT61223.2024.10543443(1-4)Online publication date: 5-Apr-2024
  • (2022)Terrain Perception Using Wearable Parrot-Inspired Companion Robot, KiliRoBiomimetics10.3390/biomimetics70200817:2(81)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2022
  • (2022)Lifelog Retrieval From Daily Digital Data: Narrative ReviewJMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/3051710:5(e30517)Online publication date: 2-May-2022
  • (2022)Vibrotactile Navigation for Visually Impaired PeopleProceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3517428.3550387(1-4)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
  • (2021)MotionRing: Creating Illusory Tactile Motion around the Head using 360°  Vibrotactile HeadbandsThe 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3472749.3474781(724-731)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2021
  • (2021)VHP: Vibrotactile Haptics Platform for On-body ApplicationsThe 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3472749.3474772(598-612)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2021
  • (2021)Vibrotactile Feedback System From the Fingertip to the Temples for Perceptual Enhancement of Contracture PalpationIEEE Transactions on Haptics10.1109/TOH.2021.307650114:2(285-290)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2021
  • (2021)Directional Resolution of Haptic Display Consisted of a pair of Vibrators Embedded Earrings2021 IEEE 10th Global Conference on Consumer Electronics (GCCE)10.1109/GCCE53005.2021.9621878(255-258)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2021
  • (2020)Investigating the intelligibility of a computer vision system for blind usersProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3377325.3377508(419-429)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2020
  • (2020)3D Audio Navigation - Feasibility and Requirements for Older AdultsComputers Helping People with Special Needs10.1007/978-3-030-58805-2_38(323-331)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2020
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