Electronic Travel Aids (ETAs)aredevices that aim at providing information aboutsurroundingsto thevisually impaired. Our system is onesuch aid, which isbased on an object detection mechanismusedtodetect the presence of obstaclesthat immediately impede the path,by means of real time video processing.This paper presentsanimplementation ofthe system'salgorithmwhichaims to provide navigationalassistance, and in particular,for the visually impaired;usinga Da-Vinci Digital Media Processor,theDM642.A video camera feeds images of the surroundings totheDM642, which works on the video, frameby frame. The processor carries outimage processing techniques whose result contains information aboutthe object in terms of image pixels. The algorithm aims to select the object which, among all others, posesmaximum threat to the navigation. A database containing a total of three soundsis constructed. Hence,each image translates to a beep, where every beepinforms the navigator of the obstacles directly in front ofhim. This paper implements an algorithm that issimple,efficientand computationally less intensive.
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