Assisted Movement of Visually Impaired in Outdoor Environments-Work Directions and New Results

摘要

In the last years, the traditional tools used by visually impaired to navigate in real outdoor environments (white can and guiding dogs) are to be substituted with electronic travel aids (ETA). These devices, based on sensor technology and signal processing, are capable to improve the mobility of blind users in unknown or dynamically changing environment. In the present paper, the most important theoretical and practical results obtained in the field of ETAs are presented first. Some original results of the author's team, which include new concepts in this field, like integrated environment for assisted movement, acoustical virtual reality (AVR), bioinspired solutions are then discussed in more detail. Some conclusions and the further developments in this area are also presented.