E-cane with situation presumption for the visually impaired

  • Authors:

  • Yoshihiro Yasumuro;Mikako Murakami;Masataka Imura;Tomohiro Kuroda;Yoshitsugu Manabe;Kunihiro Chihara

  • Affiliations:

  • Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara, Japan;Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara, Japan;Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara, Japan;Department of Medical Informatics, Kyoto University Hospital, Sakyo, Kyoto, Japan;Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara, Japan;Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara, Japan

  • Venue:
  • ERCIM'02 Proceedings of the User interfaces for all 7th international conference on Universal access: theoretical perspectives, practice, and experience
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

The E-cane is an electronic aid equipment for the visually impaired to widely detect the obstacles that normal white cane cannot reach. We propose a situation presumption algorithm, "Wall/Floor-strategy" for the E-cane, which is capable of detecting the presuming the condition of spot where the blind user is stepping into. When some obstacles are recognised, E-cane informs the user about the types of the obstacles;the walls, gaps, stairs and so on by vibration and voice. This paper presents our proto-type implementation and some experimental results, that show the effectiveness of the proposed system.