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Automatic Identification of Braille Blocks by Neural Network Using Multi-Channel Pressure Sensor Array

Published: 15 February 2021 Publication History

Abstract

In recent years, the number of visually impaired people in Japan has exceeded 300,000 including those with low vision, and accidental falls on the station platform involving them have not been eliminated. Persons having acquired visual impairment make up one third of all cases of blindness in Japan. It is known that they often cannot walk alone with only a white cane or guide dog. The main cause of platform accidents was misidentification of braille blocks. Therefore, it was necessary to develop an auxiliary device for accurately identifying braille blocks that the acquired visually impaired could also use easily. In this research, we developed an automatic identification system for braille blocks using foot pressure data acquired by a multi-channel pressure sensor array. First, we devised a new foot pressure data acquisition device using a multi-channel pressure sensor array. Our proposed device had excellent features such as being light weight, low cost, and easy to extend to multi-channel. Second, in order to accurately identify the braille blocks, the foot pressure data acquired under various conditions was learned by neural network, and identification performance evaluated. As a result of the experiment, the braille blocks could be identified with a high rate of at least 98% accuracy by neural network, with a very simple structure of an input layer (16 neurons), a hidden layer (5 neurons), and an output layer (4 neurons).

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Braille Tactile-to-Auditory Conversion System Based on Self-Learning Flexible Tactile Sensor Array With Attention-Mechanism ModelIEEE Sensors Journal10.1109/JSEN.2024.346241824:21(36148-36158)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
  • (2022)Inference System for Automatic Identification of Braille Blocks Using a Pressure Sensor Array2022 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops)10.1109/PerComWorkshops53856.2022.9767257(46-49)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2022
  • (2021)VIDVIP: Dataset for Object Detection During Sidewalk TravelJournal of Robotics and Mechatronics10.20965/jrm.2021.p113533:5(1135-1143)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2021

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            cover image ACM Other conferences
            CIIS '20: Proceedings of the 2020 3rd International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Systems
            November 2020
            135 pages
            ISBN:9781450388085
            DOI:10.1145/3440840
            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: 15 February 2021

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            Author Tags

            1. Neural Network
            2. foot pressure sensors
            3. identification of braille block
            4. visually impaired people

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            View all
            • (2024)Braille Tactile-to-Auditory Conversion System Based on Self-Learning Flexible Tactile Sensor Array With Attention-Mechanism ModelIEEE Sensors Journal10.1109/JSEN.2024.346241824:21(36148-36158)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2024
            • (2022)Inference System for Automatic Identification of Braille Blocks Using a Pressure Sensor Array2022 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops)10.1109/PerComWorkshops53856.2022.9767257(46-49)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2022
            • (2021)VIDVIP: Dataset for Object Detection During Sidewalk TravelJournal of Robotics and Mechatronics10.20965/jrm.2021.p113533:5(1135-1143)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2021

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