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Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People
Indoor navigation is a challenging task for visually impaired people. Although there are guidance systems available for such purposes, they have some drawbacks that hamper their direct application in real-life situations. These systems are either too complex, inaccurate, or require very special cond...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4721829/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26703610 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s151229912 |
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author | Martinez-Sala, Alejandro Santos Losilla, Fernando Sánchez-Aarnoutse, Juan Carlos García-Haro, Joan |
author_facet | Martinez-Sala, Alejandro Santos Losilla, Fernando Sánchez-Aarnoutse, Juan Carlos García-Haro, Joan |
author_sort | Martinez-Sala, Alejandro Santos |
collection | PubMed |
description | Indoor navigation is a challenging task for visually impaired people. Although there are guidance systems available for such purposes, they have some drawbacks that hamper their direct application in real-life situations. These systems are either too complex, inaccurate, or require very special conditions (i.e., rare in everyday life) to operate. In this regard, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology has been shown to be effective for indoor positioning, providing a high level of accuracy and low installation complexity. This paper presents SUGAR, an indoor navigation system for visually impaired people which uses UWB for positioning, a spatial database of the environment for pathfinding through the application of the A* algorithm, and a guidance module. The interaction with the user takes place using acoustic signals and voice commands played through headphones. The suitability of the system for indoor navigation has been verified by means of a functional and usable prototype through a field test with a blind person. In addition, other tests have been conducted in order to show the accuracy of different relevant parts of the system. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4721829 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-47218292016-01-26 Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People Martinez-Sala, Alejandro Santos Losilla, Fernando Sánchez-Aarnoutse, Juan Carlos García-Haro, Joan Sensors (Basel) Article Indoor navigation is a challenging task for visually impaired people. Although there are guidance systems available for such purposes, they have some drawbacks that hamper their direct application in real-life situations. These systems are either too complex, inaccurate, or require very special conditions (i.e., rare in everyday life) to operate. In this regard, Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology has been shown to be effective for indoor positioning, providing a high level of accuracy and low installation complexity. This paper presents SUGAR, an indoor navigation system for visually impaired people which uses UWB for positioning, a spatial database of the environment for pathfinding through the application of the A* algorithm, and a guidance module. The interaction with the user takes place using acoustic signals and voice commands played through headphones. The suitability of the system for indoor navigation has been verified by means of a functional and usable prototype through a field test with a blind person. In addition, other tests have been conducted in order to show the accuracy of different relevant parts of the system. MDPI 2015-12-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4721829/ /pubmed/26703610 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s151229912 Text en © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons by Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Martinez-Sala, Alejandro Santos Losilla, Fernando Sánchez-Aarnoutse, Juan Carlos García-Haro, Joan Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People |
title | Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People |
title_full | Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People |
title_fullStr | Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People |
title_full_unstemmed | Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People |
title_short | Design, Implementation and Evaluation of an Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired People |
title_sort | design, implementation and evaluation of an indoor navigation system for visually impaired people |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4721829/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26703610 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s151229912 |
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