Mobile crowd assisted navigation for the visually impaired

Greg Olmschenk, Christopher Yang, Zhigang Zhu, Hanghang Tong, William H. Seiple

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The World Health Organization estimates that 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 million have low vision. In order to improve the overall situation without having the user feel encumbered, our Crowd Assisted Navigation app is designed for smartphones (including both iPhones and Android phones), which are by far the most commonly used mobile devices among those with low vision. Many individuals would rather forget their wallets at home than their phones. A smartphone is easily accessible and its use does not attract undue attention towards the user's need of aid for his/her disability. The app's primary objective is to assist a visually impaired or blind user in navigating from point A to point B through reliable directions given from an online community. The phone is able to stream live video to a crowd of sighted users through our website. The crowd is then able to give directions from the website with the push of one of the four arrow keys, indicating either left, right, forward, or stop. The aggregation of these directions will be relayed back to the user by audio.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Advanced and Trusted Computing, 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Internet of People and Associated Symposia/Workshops, UIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP 2015
EditorsJianhua Ma, Ali Li, Huansheng Ning, Laurence T. Yang
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages324-327
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781467372114
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 20 2016
Externally publishedYes
EventProceedings - 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Advanced and Trusted Computing, 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Internet of People and Associated Symposia/Workshops, UIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP 2015 - Beijing, China
Duration: Aug 10 2015Aug 14 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Advanced and Trusted Computing, 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Internet of People and Associated Symposia/Workshops, UIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP 2015

Conference

ConferenceProceedings - 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, 2015 IEEE 12th International Conference on Advanced and Trusted Computing, 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Cloud and Big Data Computing, 2015 IEEE International Conference on Internet of People and Associated Symposia/Workshops, UIC-ATC-ScalCom-CBDCom-IoP 2015
Country/TerritoryChina
CityBeijing
Period8/10/158/14/15

Keywords

  • Assistive technology
  • Crowd sourcing
  • Mobile
  • Navigation
  • Visually impaired

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
  • Signal Processing
  • Health Informatics

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