Developing a way-finding system on mobile robot assisting visually impaired people in an indoor environment

摘要

A way-finding system in an indoor environment consists of several components: localization, representation, path planning, and interaction. For each component, numerous relevant techniques have been proposed. However, deploying feasible techniques, particularly in real scenarios, remains challenging. In this paper, we describe a functional way-finding system deployed on a mobile robot to assist visual impairments (VI). The proposed system deploys state-of-the-art techniques that are adapted to the practical issues at hand. First, we adapt an outdoor visual odometry technique to indoor use by covering manual markers or stickers on ground-planes. The main purpose is to build reliable travel routes in the environment. Second, we propose a procedure to define and optimize the landmark/representative scenes of the environment. This technique handles the repetitive and ambiguous structures of the environment. In order to interact with VI people, we deploy a convenient interface on a smart phone. Three different indoor scenarios and thirteen subjects are conducted in our evaluations. Our experimental results show that VI people, particularly VI pupils, can find the right way to requested targets.