A GUIDING SYSTEM FOR BLIND PEOPLE USING GPS

A PROJECT REPORT

Submitted by

S.HARI BABU 080407102094

V.M.MOHAMED NAZAR 080407102105

S.SRINIVASAN 080407102120

K.KAAVANNAN 080407102126

DEPARTMENT OF ECE

COIMBATORE INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGY

COIMBATORE-641109

ANNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

COIMBATORE 641047

OCTOBER 2010

ANNA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, COIMBATORE 641047

BONAFIDE CERTICATE

Certified that this project report “ A GUIDING SYSTEM FOR BLIND PEOPLE

USING GPS ” is the bonafide work of …………………………………………..

………………………….. who have carried out the project work under my

supervision.

SIGNATURE SIGNATURE

SUPERVISOR HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT

-------------------------- -----------------------------

Internal Examiner External Examiner

ABSTRACT

The blind people have problem in finding the location where they are and

also to cross the traffic junction. The device help them by guiding wherever they

needed to go. The device will guide then where they are at now and how they has

to obtain the destination.

The Obstacle detector detect the object in front of the blind people and

indicate them. The GPS that directly communicates with the satellite and send data

to guiding device to find the current location of user. The guiding device that

communicate with sever through the RF transmitter & receiver that will send the

audio response to the guiding device as user convenient. The server will also

updating the status of the traffic signal that in the path of the user by

communicating with the traffic control unit. So the server can send the information

to guiding device to help the user to cross the traffic junction.

This device will accommodate the blind people as like a one person with

them. So they don’t need to depend on others. This can be implementing in the

mobile also. So they need not carry an external device with them.

INTRODUCTION

According to the World Health Organization, there are 45 million blind

people in the world, which amounts to an estimated 1h to 2h of the population in

industrialized countries. This figure cannot be neglected, and the problems

encountered by blind people in their everyday life need to be addressed. In

particular, these people are faced with huge difficulties moving in cities, where

streets, public transportation systems and shopping malls represent hostile ever-

changing environments. As a result, blind people are in danger while moving on

their own, and their autonomy is limited. Indeed, if blind people can generally

remember their way to some places, they cannot know in advance what obstacles

they will stumble upon. In consequence, the fear of the unknown often leads them

to restrict their universe to a small set of known places. They do not dare going

anywhere else, thus experiencing limited travel freedom.

Leader dogs can help blind people avoid obstacles and find their way in

unknown environments, but they are very expensive: the cost per blind person –

leader dog pair ranges from $15,000 to $30,000. Despite the financial support of

some organizations such as the Lions Club, only very few blind people can

actually have a leader dog, while many of them would like to.

However, leader dogs represent a very valuable means of dealing with

unknown places. Indeed, they see obstacles at a distance, and can therefore

anticipate the necessary avoidance maneuvers. In contrast, blind people using

canes can feel silent obstacles at a cane’s length distance only, so their anticipation

capability is very poor. The dog can help them improve their anticipation

performances, which leads directly to more fluent trajectories, more self-

confidence and easier travel.

This is the reason why numerous electronic locomotion assistance systems

have been developed. The vast majority of existing systems are obstacle detectors

that can warn users of the presence of obstacles in advance, so as to enable them to

anticipate the presence of obstacles and adapt their behavior accordingly.

Electronic devices are significantly cheaper than leader dogs, although erring more

limited, yet valuable information.

It is important to notice that the white cane is not only a useful obstacle

detector for blind people, but also a means by which blind people are recognized

by sighted people. In consequence, all locomotion assistance devices for the blind

must be designed to be secondary aids, used in complement to the long cane, and

not instead of it, because they are not inherently social indicators of blindness. In

this chapter, we first present an overview of existing obstacle detectors, while

distinguishing two die rent facets in these systems: information capture and

information presentation. After, we discuss the shortcomings of existing systems

and we draw a list of requirements for more advanced systems. Then, we give

details about the implementation issues of this new class of systems: user

localization and environment modeling, from the structural and semantic points of

view. Finally, we show how these issues take place within the broader field if

ambient intelligence.

LITERATURE SURVEY

IN REF [Project Number: 48 JFZ- D073 ]

GPS TECHNOLOGY TO AID THE BLIND AND PARTIALLY

SIGHTED IN COPENHAGEN

Project done by

Troy Coverstone

Christine Cronin

Sofie Kniazeva

Date: May 7, 2007

Advisor:

Professor John Zeugner,

Abstract:

This project, jointly sponsored in Copenhagen by the Danish Association of

the Blind (DBS) and the Euman Company, assessed the feasibility of using

Euman’s LifePilot GPS technology for blind and partially sighted individuals.

After conducting literature research as well as surveys and focus groups, the team

concluded that there is a potential for Euman technology, currently being

eveloped, and an overall need for navigational aids, and recommended a variety of

features for a GPS based device that would prove useful in the visually impaired

community.

Executive Summary:

This project, jointly sponsored in Copenhagen by the Danish Association of

the Blind and the Euman Company, assessed the feasibility of integrating the

LifePilot GPS technology (produced by Euman) into the blind and partially sighted

community.

Project Statement:

There are over forty-five million blind and partially sighted people

worldwide that face everyday challenges living with such a disability presents (Up

to 45 Million Blind People Globally - and Growing, 2007). This project explored

current technology, specifically the Lifepilot GPS devices, as a promising aid for

both support and encouragement to the blind and partially sighted as they strive for

an independent life. The project focused on identifying the features that should be

included in such a device in order to make it better adapted for the visually

impaired community. The following study was broken down into multiple parts.

First, there was extensive background research into what technology currently

exists on the worldwide market for the visually impaired and what studies have

already been conducted in this area. Next, surveys were written and submitted to

members of the Danish Association of the Blind to gauge a basic understanding of

the desire and need for GPS technology. In addition the project team visited

several institutions for the blind, and underwent blindness sensitivity training.

After the surveys proved a general interest in GPS devices, two focus groups were

held in order to get more in-depth data. Three of the volunteers were able to test

the software on a simple route pre-designed by the project team and with way

points identified in Danish and pre-recorded on the server to be activated as the

GPS swept across them. The participants gave their feedback on the various way

points although more often than not during the trails the GPS positioning was

inaccurate or the pre-corded messages failed to play (a software problem that was

fixed after the focus group sessions were held).

The survey and focus groups proved to be very successful tools in

determining how GPS technology can best benefit blind and partially sighted

individuals. A myriad of suggestions came from the focus groups but tended to

coalesce around the following assertions: on demand information (via a push of a

button) on location, street lights, etc.; a special route with all bus stops and

information about them listed; the buttons on the device should be noticeably

separated.

Extensive testing by the project team revealed widespread deficiencies in the

current software on the Life pilot cell phones. Specifically, the main server proved

to be erratic and undependable, and the linkage between GPS way points and audio

descriptions often proved faulty. So difficult were the technology issues that the

project team could only conduct one actual test with visually impaired participants

(in which the participants were only able to test the route from the DBS to the 2nd

turn location). Those tests revealed further problems: the necessarily inaccurate

identifications via the GPS system, great difficulty using the closely spaced and

tiny buttons and lack of speech recognition software. However, there remained

several features of the technology that blind and partially sighted users favored and

hoped could be extended and modified. For example, the ability to record their

own voice messages, the fact that the audio can be replayed and the capability to

share the routes via the internet, and messages can be replayed again and again so

as to overcome outside noise. Moreover, in the very last days of the project, the

software was dramatically improved, although the structured imprecision of non-

military GPS remains an insurmountable impasse.

Through this study, it can be seen that GPS technology, specifically Life

pilot, has potential to help many blind and partially sighted individuals. Issues with

the software will need to be worked out and the devices themselves will need to be

better adapted for visually impaired (i.e. voice recognition software, large button

sizes, etc). Furthermore through the course of research and focus group discussion

the project team learned of several other innovations that might prove useful both

to the sponsoring agencies and to blind and partially sighted community in

Denmark such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. It is

recommended that both groups look into (RFID) technology as an aid for the blind

and partially sighted. Perhaps, a combination of GPS and RFID technology could

be successful in the future. The GPS would allow the user to navigate to a general

area (i.e. a specific train station) and the RFID would allow for more accuracy for

immediate surroundings (i.e. a doorway inside the train station).

One of the most important aspects of this study is that a majority of the data

gathered was from blind and partially sighted individuals; the people who can

benefit from this technology. By using their suggestions and adapting the GPS

technology, a mutually beneficial product can be formed that can provide aid for

the visually impaired on an everyday basis.

Comments:

These routes were examined as alternative routes to address the issue of high

traffic and commotion. Unlike the first test route, they both followed back streets,

with little to no automobile activities. However, as seen in the following pictures,

the sidewalks were not suitable for blind and visually impaired individuals: they

were not clearly marked and had parked cars blocking half of them. Furthermore,

they included intersections with no lights.

In W. Barfield & T. Caudell (Eds.),

Fundamentals of Wearable Computers - and

Augmented Reality. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence

Erlbaum Associates, 2001.

GPS-Based Navigation Systems for the Visually Impaired

Jack M. Loomis, Reginald G. Golledge

University of califormia santa barbara

Roberta L. Klatzky

Carnegie Mellon university

INTRODUCTION

According to the 1990 U.S. Census of Population, there are approximately

1.1 million individuals registered as legally blind and up to 3 million reporting

severe vision impairment. Yet another 3 to 4 million are visually impaired to the

degree that they cannot drive andlor have difficulty readit@ signs or printed

material. The most fundamental needs of visually impaired or blind populations

include access to information (particularly that presented in written format),

accessibility to the environment, an independence of movement. Our focus here is

on the latter two needs.

Accessibility to the environment is important for all individuals. Access

includes not only physical mobility, such as making a trip to a store by a selected

transportation mode, but also being able to recognize key choice points or decision

points in the environment (e.g.. landmarks, streets, of neighborhoods).

Accessibility therefore involves the ability to interpret,

recognize, and understand the layout of features in the environment as well as

being able to travel in as obstacle-free a manner as possible.

For many blind people the loss of sight is paralleled by a loss of

independence. Of the 1.1 million legally blind persons in the United States,

approximately 10,000 use guide dogs and 100,000 are able to travel somewhat

independently using a long cane. This leaves approximately 1 million people who

are dependent on other humans for movement, information processing, and

environmental interpretation and use. Loss of independence is probably the most

humbling of all the disadvantages associated with the loss of sight. A wearable

device that can reduce dependence in all manners of interaction with the local

environment is of the utmost importance to increasing the quality of life for the

blind or visually impaired individual.

This chapter details the current state of research and development on GPS-

based navigation systems for the visually impaired, most of which are portable,

verging on wearable. It begins with a consideration of the need for such systems by

the visually impaired, distinguishing between two different aspects of way

finding--obstacle avoidance and navigation. It then reviews a number of efforts

aimed at developing navigation aids for the visually impaired and then focuses first

on other projects dealing with GPS-based navigation systems and then on our own

project. It then briefly describes some research we have done on the display of

information for route guidance and for conveying the spatial layout of important

off-route entities (e.g., landmarks) and ends with a consideration of the obstacles to

be overcome in implementing effective practical systems.

Comments:

In view of the ever improving accuracy of GPS receivers, increasing

coverage of differential correction, decreasing size and cost of electronics,

increasing sophistication of GIs software, and growing availability of digital maps

suitable for pedestrian travel, the prospects are excellent that truly wearable GPS-

based navigation systems will someday be used by both the visually impaired and

sighted populations (in connection with the latter, see Feiner, MacIntyre, Hollerer,

& Webster, 1997). Surely, obstacles remain, such as the development of low-cost

alternatives to GPS when GPS coverage is lacking, creation and maintenance of

digital maps appropriate to blind travel, fabrication of reliable, affordable, and

lightweight systems for all-weather operation, and coping with the inevitable

liability issues.

The Blind Leading the Blind: Toward Collaborative Online Route

Information Management by Individuals with Visual Impairments

Vladimir Kulyukin

vladimir.kulyukin@usu.edu

Department of Computer Science

Utah State University, Logan, UT

John Nicholson

jnicholson@cc.usu.edu

Department of Computer Science

Utah State University, Logan, UT

David Ross

ross0128@bellsouth.net

Atlanta VA Rehab R&D Center

Atlanta, GA

James Marston

marston@geog.ucsb.edu

Department of Geography

University of California Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, CA

Florence Gaunet

florence.gaunet@wanadoo.fr

Laboratoire d’Eco-Anthropologie

et d’Ethnobiologie (CNRS-MNHN-ParisVII)

Paris, France

Abstract

The long-term objective of our project is to discover the fundamental

principles underlying the collaborative production, sharing, and management of

route information by travelers with visual impairments. The specific research

hypothesis is two-fold: 1) people with varied levels of vision loss and orientation

and mobility (O&M) skills will be able to form online social networks that

collaboratively manage large route information collections for different geographic

areas, and 2) members of such networks will be able to successfully travel through

a variety of previously unknown indoor and outdoor environments of varied

complexity when provided with online verbal route directions referencing

landmarks and path integration information salient to their particular vision and

skill level. In this paper, we report on the initial stage of our project: an online

survey whose objectives are to collect samples of route descriptions from travelers

with visual impairments and to do the initial profiling of the target population. The

data collected so far provide valuable insights into what travelers with visual

impairments need to know about their environments in order to travel

independently and how they may communicate that information to their fellow

travelers in the future.

Introduction

The adoption of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (U.S.Congress 1973) and the

Americans with Disabilities Act of1990 (ADA) (U.S. Congress 1990) provided

legal and financial incentives for improvement in universal access (LaPlante &

Carlson 1996). Many R&D activities initiated by the Acts focused on removing

structural barriers to universal access: building ramps and bus lifts, developing

specialized interfaces, e.g., haptic, Braille, sip and puff, to electronic and

mechanical devices, and retrofitting auto vehicles for wheelchair access. These

important pursuits have not removed the main functional barrier faced by people

with visual impairments: the great difficulty of independently orienting to, and

navigating through, dynamic and complex everyday

environments. This barrier severely limits their ability to travel independently

outdoors, impedes spontaneous use of public transportation, denies them equal

access to

buildings, and helps create conditions that cause this group to have one of the

highest unemployment rates of all disabled groups (74%) (Kaye, Kang, & LaPlante

2000).

Much R&D effort has been dedicated to wearable assisted navigation solutions

using various sensors including GPS (Loomis et al. 2005), infrared (Addlesee et al.

2001), radio frequency identification (RFID) (Ross 2001), and Wi-Fi (Kulyukin &

Nicholson 2005). While these approaches haveshown promise, they have had

limited success due to the following gaps.

Conclusions

If routes are well described for a given environment and collections of route

descriptions are made available, then the visual impaired will have a powerful tool.

University students new to a campus could independently find their classrooms.

Travelers to cities could explore tourist sites in a manner similar to sighted

visitors. The accessibility barriers for visually impaired navigators would be

drastically lowered. A well-formed ontology for route descriptions to the blind will

serve multiple purposes. Using the ontology as a guide, sighted people could be

enlisted to initially build and tag basic collections of routes. Later, using

collaborative tools, the visually impaired could refine the routes, add new tags and

routes, and manage the emerging route collections. The ontology could also serve

to help define a structure that would ensure that software tools could be developed

to extract and develop new routes from the user-provided data. In time, one can

envision databases of route descriptions accessible through multiple devices such

as desktop computer systems, PDAs, cell phones, and electronic travel aids. Such

databases would likely be relevant to people with cognitive disabilities, allowing

them to travel independently in their environment as well.

We are working toward a collaborative online service that can be managed

by individuals with visual impairments independently or as an enhancement to

other navigation technologies. Many navigation technologies use GPS to guide

travelers around outdoor environments, but GPS does not work indoors. Our

service could eventually be used in conjunction with GPS and other existing

outdoor-oriented travel aids to guide an traveler through both indoor and outdoor

environments with comfort and ease.

Designing a Computational Construction Kit for the Blind and Visually Impaired

by

Rahul Bhargava

Introduction

Computers and Learning

In recent years, computers have become established elements of many types

of learning settings, used in different ways for various learning activities.

Unfortunately, the power of the computer as a flexible medium for designing and

creating has often been ignored. Tools that are designed to let users create their

own constructions empower learners to engage computation as a creative material.

The process of creating these artifacts opens the door to a myriad of learning

opportunities, many in fields that are otherwise difficult to approach. More

specifically, in the process of creating computational objects, many of the

underlying ideas of computation itself can be explored.

The blind and visually impaired often interact with more computational

devices in learning settings, but have even fewer opportunities to create with

computation itself. The visually impaired° use tools such as adjustable magnifiers,

text scanners, and speech-synthesis devices to access curricular materials that are

otherwise inaccessible. Visually impaired people use computers to do word

processing, send email, and surf the web, among other things. However, none of

these tools take advantage of the opportunity to engage learners in explorations of

how these computational tools can be used to create their own artifacts. The

growing reliance on “black-box” devices in learning settings can be inherently

disempowering to the learner – denying them not only of an understanding of their

functionality, but also the chance to explore the rationale behind their design.

New Tools for New Explorations

Playing with computational construction kits can allow people to create in

new ways and engage new fields of knowledge. A computational construction kit

can be described as a set of tools or objects that allow one to create a

computational artifact. They build on the tradition of existing children’s

construction kits, such as LEGO bricks and Erector sets, by giving children a set of

digital building blocks. The Programmable Brick is a computational construction

kit that allows users to create behaviors for their constructions in the physical

world (Resnick,1993). It can be programmed to interact with the world around it

using a wide range of sensors and actuators. These extensions, in addition to the

“brain” that is the Brick itself, are the components of the kit. The Programmable

Brick has been developed and iterated upon for the past 15 years in the MIT Media

Lab’s Epistemology and Learning Group (http://el.www.media.mit.edu/).

Creating a computational construction kit is “a type of meta-design: it

involves the design of new tools and activities to support students in their own

design activities” (Resnick, et al. 1996). Giving learners the tools to create and

build their own computational artifacts opens the door to exploring new ideas. In

order to address some of the issues presented, I have created a Programmable

Brick for the visually impaired, called the Bricket. This thesis documents the

hardware and software interfaces redesigned to

meet the learning needs of the visually impaired. I developed a series of activities

that use the Bricket to explore a set of approaches to learning and specific skills to

learn.. These activities were conducted with a group of three visually impaired

children, all in their early teens.

A user interacts with a Programmable Brick by creating a software program

on a host unit, usually a desktop computer, and then downloading

it to the Brick’s memory. The Brick can then run the program to inter Cricket. Act

with the world around it. An older Programmable Brick evolved into the

commercially available LEGO Mindstorms product based around the RCX (also

referred to as the “yellow brick”). The latest Programmable Brick is known as the

Cricket . The Bricket created for this thesis, is an adapted version of the Cricket.

Users create programs for the Bricket on a Windows PC running an application

called Bricket Logo. This application implements a small scripting version of the

LOGO programming language.

A Programmable Brick for the Visually Impaired

The Bricket was created to bring these technologies and activities to the

visually impaired community. The inspiration for this project came from Sile

O’Modhrain, while she was at the MIT Media Lab as a visiting researcher°. Sile is

visually impaired, and conversations with her led to the idea that this could be an

interesting community to work with.

There were a multitude of reasons that the visually impaired community was

an appropriate one to work with. Technologically, the basic sensors of the

Programmable Brick, used with various actuators, are well suited to representing

specific components of visual feedback. Simple resistive light sensors and optical

distance sensors can replace things such

as light and distance, which are usually sensed through vision. These basic sensors

are also well suited to the limited processing power of the Programmable Bricks.

From a theoretical point of view, working with this community presents an

opportunity to take the research of the Epistemology and Learning group in a new

direction. Addressing the learning needs and learning styles of the visually

impaired led to reflections about the foundational frameworks we use in our

research.

Many methodologies have been created to guide designing for disabled

communities, but most share a core high-level of interaction with the community.

Believing that to be a key ingredient to successful designs, I engaged two members

of the visually impaired community to aid and guide me. The first was Sile

O’Modhrain. The second was Rich Calaggero, a visually impaired programmer

who works in the MIT assistive technologies office (ATIC). I held weekly

consultations with both to get immediate feedback on design decisions.

Conclusion

This thesis presents an example of technologies that allow the visually

impaired to create computational artifacts and activities that allow them to explore

relevant domains of knowledge. I have documented the process of developing for

this community’s needs, and the learning topics that were discovered to be

important to the participants of my study.

Bringing the constructionist approach towards learning activities to this new

community proved quite successful. In particular, focusing on activities with

physical constructions proved appropriate. It quickly became apparent that because

of their visual impairment, the learners I worked with felt comfortable engaging

with tools in a tactile way. This interaction lends itself towards building physical

objects. While constructionist activities do not all focus around tangible objects,

this audience seems to find those most resonant with their interaction patterns.

The case studies present a closer look at exactly what ideas I explored with

my study participants. Their constructions show a willingness to adopt the Bricket

technology as a creative tool to build with. Building their own computational

devices introduced them to some basic ideas of computation and engineering. They

cam up with numerous ideas that are similar to commercial offerings, such as

• an audio note-taker

• a remote control for the television

• a speaking watch

All of these are assistive devices designed for and sold to the visually

impaired community. The Bricket computational construction kit we worked with

gave these learners an inclination of how the various pieces of electronics in these

devices are put together and controlled. However, they were able to do so in a way

that explored some foundational ideas of computation, changing their attitudes

towards what computation is.

GPS Microcontroller Encoder Transmitter

Speaker Audio Receiver

OBSTACLE DETECTOR

ADC

PROPOSED WORK

In our project we are having three modules namely

Guiding device

Traffic unit

Server unit

GUIDING DEVICE

BLOCK DIAGRAM

The Obstacle detector detect the object in front of the blind people. That

signal will converted into digital signal ADC circuit and given to the

microcontroller. The microcontroller signal is given to the encoder and depends on

the input signal from the obstacle detector; the encoder signal is transmitted

through the transmitter.

East road LED

West road LED

South road LED

North road LED

Micro Controller

RF Transmitter

Encoder

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is any instrument which is directly

communicates with the satellite. By fixing this instrument, the instrument gathers

the location of it in the world from the satellite. This data from the satellite is given

to the microcontroller. The microcontroller signal is given to the encoder and

depends on the input signal from the GPS; the encoder signal is transmitted

through the transmitter.

TRAFFIC UNIT

BLOCK DIAGRAM

In this traffic unit the turn ON the LED based the predefined delay in the

traffic signal. The LEDs are controlled by the microcontroller and this

information’s are also been encoded and transmitted through the transmitter.

Receiver Microcontroller

Decoder RS232 Computer

Audio TransmitterReceiver Decoder

SERVER UNIT

The radio frequency send from the transmitter is received by the receiver

and decode through the decoder. This signal is given to the microcontroller. Thus

the signal from the GPS is received by the microcontroller in the receiver and the

location from the GPS is send to the computer through the interfacing circuit. We

are using the visual basic software for the data communication in the computer. By

programming in the computer, we can transmit the voice signal from it through the

RF transmitter. This voice signal can be received and hear by the blind person

through the speaker. Thus a blind person can hear the indication of the object in

front of them and also location using GPS technology.