A COST-EFFECTIVE INDOOR VIBROTACTILE NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR THE BLIND

Abstract

This paper describes the development of an indoor vibrotactile navigation system for the visually impaired people. We aimed at realizing a wearable, low-cost, and effective system able to help blind users in unknown indoor environments that they might visit occasionally, such as hospitals, airports, museums, etc. The designed system implements a Bluetooth (BT) localization service, and provides wayfinding cues to the user by means of a wearable device equipped with five motors. The last part of our work describes early results obtained by the use of electroencephalographic (EEG) analysis to evaluate the vibrotactile feedback.