A wearable navigation system for visually impaired users

Abstract

Navigation systems for visually impaired users have been researched extensively and most of these systems are wearable systems and devices. User-friendliness, functionality, location-based environment information retrieval and user interaction have been investigated in these navigation systems. Recently, Google Maps API, which can generate web-based maps and provide visualization functions, has been employed in some navigation systems. However, few researchers have discussed the possibilities of using the open source API for the visually impaired users. This paper presents a navigation system for these users, where navigation information generated by the Google Maps API is utilized and converted to useful directional information for the target users. A user interaction and feedback module with a universal control interface providing multiple user interaction modes have been developed for this navigation system.