Smartphone-Based Assistance for Blind People to Stand in Lines
Seita Kayukawa, Hironobu Takagi, João Guerreiro, Shigeo Morishima, and Chieko Asakawa
Travelers stand in a queue with luggage. A participant holding a smartphone and a white cane moves forward as the people ahead advance, then stops to maintain their place in line.
We present a smartphone-based system that assists blind people to stand in lines.
We present a smartphone-based system that assists blind people to stand in lines.
The system uses a built-in RGB camera and infrared camera of an off-the shelf smart-phone to estimate the distance to a person in front of the user.
An iPhone 11 Pro uses its RGB camera to detect the person ahead and its infrared depth sensor to estimate that person's 3D position. The animation labels the sensors, person detection, and position sensing.
The system uses a built-in RGB camera and infrared camera of an off-the shelf smart-phone to estimate the distance to a person in front of the user.
An animation compares gaps of less than and greater than 50 centimeters between a smartphone user and the person ahead. Vibration cues indicate when the gap has opened so the user can advance, and when to stop.
Based on the distance information provided by vibration alerts, blind users can stop or start moving forward to right position at the right timing.
Based on the distance information provided by vibration alerts, blind users can stop or start moving forward to right position at the right timing.
30-sec Preview Video
A smartphone senses the person ahead and provides vibration feedback to help a blind traveler follow a moving line.
Main Video [1:16]
A smartphone senses the person ahead and provides vibration feedback to help a blind traveler follow a moving line.
Abstract
We present a system to allow blind people to stand in line in public spaces by using an off-the-shelf smartphone only. The technologies to navigate blind pedestrians in public spaces are rapidly improving, but tasks which require to understand surrounding people's behavior are still difficult to assist. Standing in line at shops, stations, and other crowded places is one of such tasks. Therefore, we developed a system to detect and notify the distance to a person in front continuously by using a smartphone with an RGB camera and an infrared depth sensor. The system alerts three levels of distance via vibration patterns to allow users to start/stop moving forward to the right position at the right timing. To evaluate the effectiveness of the system, we performed a study with six blind people. We observed that the system enables blind participants to stand in line successfully, while also gaining more confidence.
Publication
Seita Kayukawa, Hironobu Takagi, João Guerreiro, Shigeo Morishima, and Chieko Asakawa.2020.Smartphone-Based Assistance for Blind People to Stand in Lines.Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA 2020).
This work was supported by JST ACCEL (JPMJAC1602) and JST-Mirai Program (JPMJMI19B2). We thank Tatsuya Ishihara, Masayuki Murata, Takashi Itoh, and Masashi Oikawa for their support.
