A route planning framework for smart wearable assistive navigation systems

摘要

Route planning (RP) enables individuals to navigate in unfamiliar environments. Current RP methodologies generateroutes that optimize criteria relevant to the traveling distance or time, whereas most of them do not consider personalpreferences or needs. Also, most of the current smart wearable assistive navigation systems offer limited support to individualswith disabilities by providing obstacle avoidance instructions, but often neglecting their special requirementswith respect to the route quality. Motivated by the mobility needs of such individuals, this study proposes a novel RPframework for assistive navigation that copes these open issues. The framework is based on a novel mixed 0–1 integernonlinear programming model for solving the RP problem with constraints originating from the needs of individualswith disabilities; unlike previous models, it minimizes: (1) the collision risk with obstacles within a path by prioritizingthe safer paths; (2) the walking time; (3) the number of turns by constructing smooth paths, and (4) the loss of culturalinterest by penalizing multiple crossovers of the same paths, while satisfying user preferences, such as points of interestto visit and a desired tour duration. The proposed framework is applied for the development of a system module forsafe navigation of visually impaired individuals (VIIs) in outdoor cultural spaces. The module is evaluated in a variety ofnavigation scenarios with different parameters. The results demonstrate the comparative advantage of our RP modelover relevant state-of-the-art models, by generating safer and more convenient routes for the VIIs.