Drishti: A Pedestrian Navigation System for the Blind in Dynamic Environments

Overview

When visually impaired people walk around campus and downtown areas, they do so lacking critical information that can affect their safty and travel experience. With limited awareness of thier surroundings, blind people often find it difficult to perform the simplest daily chores or to even take a walk in a sunny day. The DRISHTI project led by Professor Helal at the University of Florida aims to integrate advanced technologies and build a system and appropriate interfaces to navigate a visually impaired person from one room on campus to another.
Geographical Information System (GIS) and Spatial Databases are two technologies used to capture information about buildings, rooms, sidewalks, stairs, construction areas, bike racks, water fountains, rest rooms, and doors. Differential Global Positioning System, or DGPS is another technology that is used by DRISHTI to provide "constant" and precise location of the visually impaired person. Voice technology including Speech Synthesis and Voice Recognition is also used so the system and the user can communicate hands-free back and forth.
DRISHTI uses a wirelessly connected Wearable computer to integrate the blind user to the network and to correlate GPS location with relevant spatial information. When worn by the blind navigator, DRISHTI connects to the network in preparation to answering queris such as "Take me to XYZ building". In guiding the blind user, DRISHTI generates precision prompts to keep the user on the side walks of the shortest path to the destination.
DRISHT has been covered by several news and press agencies. The latest media coverage was an artcile in the Technology Section of the New York Times that appeared in October 17, 2002.
We are currently working on extending DRISHTI to work inside buildings and vistied spaces such as hotel rooms. By integrating Ultrasonic location positioning technology with outdoor GPS, DRISHTI will provide the blind user seamless and continuous operation inddor and outdoor. We are also scaling back the DRISHTI's footprint. Our objective is to fit the system into a high end smart phone by the end of year 2002.

Watch this short video clip for a multimedia version of the overview.

RFID InfoGrid for Blind Navigation and Wayfinding in Campus Environments

Overview

A navigation and location determination system for the blind is designed based on an RFID tag grid. Each RFID tag is programmed upon installation with spatial coordinates and information describing the surroundings. This allows for a selfdescribing, localized information system with no dependency on
a centralized database or wireless infrastructure for communications. The system could be integrated into building code requirements as part of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) at a cost of less than $1 per square foot. With an established RFID grid infrastructure blind students will gain the freedom to
explore and participate in activities without external assistance. An established RFID grid infrastructure will also enable advances in robotics which will benefit from knowing precise location. In this paper, we present an RFID-based information grid system with an RFID reader integrated into the user’s shoe
and walking cane with a Bluetooth connection to the user’s cell phone. To assist in navigation, user feedback and communication
via a NAVCOM belt worn around the user’s waste is introduced that features a sonic range finder and a series of pager motors for
distance feedback and a form of vibrational Braille. An emphasis is placed on the architecture and design allowing for a truly
integrated pervasive environment with minimal visual indicators of the system to the outside observer.

DrishTag - A Smart Tag for Blind-Accessible Conventions

Overview

DrishTags are small-size active RFID devices hidden behind standard plastic name tags. DrishTags are worn by both sighted and blind attendees. Blind users have text-to-speech capability added to their tags. Tag antennas are designed in such a way that limits the scope and range of discovery of peer tags. This way a blind attendee is able to discover people (and their names and other attributes) as he or she walks in a a convention floor. The system is currently being tested by volunteers with help from the State of Florida Blind Services.

People

  • Dr. Sumi Helal
  • Hen-I Yang
  • Ed Kouch
  • Raja Bose
  • Scooter Wellis
  • Lisa Ran
  • Steve Moore
  • Dr. Balaji Ramachandran

Publications

  • A. Kouche, H. Yang, R. Bose, and A. Helal, "A Smart Tag Design for Blind-Accessible Conventions - Programmer Manual," Internal Report, March 2007. (pdf).
  • S. Willis and A. Helal, "RFID Information Grid and Wearable Computing Solution to the Problem of Wayfinding for the Blind User in a Campus Environment" Proceedings of the ninth annual IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, Osaka, Japan, October 2005. (pdf). More detailed version of the paper (pdf).
  • L. Ran, A. Helal and S. Moore, "Drishti: An Integrated Indoor/Outdoor Blind Navigation System and Service", Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Pervasive Computing Conference, Orlando, Florida, March 2004. (pdf)
  • A. Helal, S. Moore, and B. Ramachandran, "Drishti: An Integrated Navigation System for Visually Impaired and Disabled," Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Wearable Computer, October 2001, Zurich, Switzerland (pdf)