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Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances

We present a protocol for evaluating the efficiency of an electronic white cane for improving the mobility of blind people. The electronic cane used during the test is the Tom Pouce III, made of LIDAR sensors (light detection and ranging) with tactile feedback. The protocol comprises two parts. The...

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Autores principales: Dernayka, Aya, Amorim, Michel-Ange, Leroux, Roger, Bogaert, Lucas, Farcy, René
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8539875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696067
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21206854
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author Dernayka, Aya
Amorim, Michel-Ange
Leroux, Roger
Bogaert, Lucas
Farcy, René
author_facet Dernayka, Aya
Amorim, Michel-Ange
Leroux, Roger
Bogaert, Lucas
Farcy, René
author_sort Dernayka, Aya
collection PubMed
description We present a protocol for evaluating the efficiency of an electronic white cane for improving the mobility of blind people. The electronic cane used during the test is the Tom Pouce III, made of LIDAR sensors (light detection and ranging) with tactile feedback. The protocol comprises two parts. The first part, the “detection test”, evaluates the efficiency of the sensors in the Tom Pouce III for detecting the obstacles found in everyday life (thin and large poles, apertures) under different environmental conditions (darkness, sun light, rain). The second part of the test, the “mobility test”, compares the ability of blind participants to cross a 25 m path by avoiding obstacles with the simple white cane and the electronic cane. The 12 blind participants had between 2 and 20 years of experience of everyday usage of Tom Pouce devices. The results show a significant improvement in the capacity to avoid obstacles with the electronic cane relative to the simple white cane, and there was no speed difference. There was no correlation between the results and the years of experience of the users.
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spelling pubmed-85398752021-10-24 Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances Dernayka, Aya Amorim, Michel-Ange Leroux, Roger Bogaert, Lucas Farcy, René Sensors (Basel) Article We present a protocol for evaluating the efficiency of an electronic white cane for improving the mobility of blind people. The electronic cane used during the test is the Tom Pouce III, made of LIDAR sensors (light detection and ranging) with tactile feedback. The protocol comprises two parts. The first part, the “detection test”, evaluates the efficiency of the sensors in the Tom Pouce III for detecting the obstacles found in everyday life (thin and large poles, apertures) under different environmental conditions (darkness, sun light, rain). The second part of the test, the “mobility test”, compares the ability of blind participants to cross a 25 m path by avoiding obstacles with the simple white cane and the electronic cane. The 12 blind participants had between 2 and 20 years of experience of everyday usage of Tom Pouce devices. The results show a significant improvement in the capacity to avoid obstacles with the electronic cane relative to the simple white cane, and there was no speed difference. There was no correlation between the results and the years of experience of the users. MDPI 2021-10-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8539875/ /pubmed/34696067 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21206854 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Dernayka, Aya
Amorim, Michel-Ange
Leroux, Roger
Bogaert, Lucas
Farcy, René
Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances
title Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances
title_full Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances
title_fullStr Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances
title_full_unstemmed Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances
title_short Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances
title_sort tom pouce iii, an electronic white cane for blind people: ability to detect obstacles and mobility performances
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8539875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696067
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21206854
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