| dc.description.abstract | An electronic travel aid (ETA) for the blind is proposed to help the blind improve the quality of their lives. The proposed ETA can help the blind perceive long-distance obstacles, travel to the desired destination, listen to an auditory watch, and control their home appliances (e.g. TV and air conditioner, etc).
The most pervasive travel aid for the blind is the white cane, which only allows them to ensure that a close front path is clear and to locate any possible near obstacle by using the white cane to touch the ground and the obstacle. Therefore, it is a demanding task to develop an easy-to-use ETA to improve the lives of the visually disabled by helping them perceive long-distance obstacles. The goal of the proposed ETA is not to replace the white cane but to complement it by helping the blind to quickly have a sketch of an unfamiliar environment in front of them. The information of the environment (e.g., the orientations, the distances, and sizes of obstacles) is extracted from an image acquired from one camera. An image-to-sound mapping algorithm is implemented to create auditory images of the obstacles ahead of the blind. The image captured by the camera is scanned from the leftist column to the rightist column and every pixel in the column is used to excite an associated sinusoidal oscillator in the audible frequency range such as 12 musical notes. The measurements from an ultrasonic sensor are used to enhance the correctness of the distance information provided by the auditory images. The environmental information is delivered to the user via an earphone. This ETA explores ways to help the blind with white canes to navigate more actively and confidently.
For long-distance travels, a GPS and an electronic compass are utilized to guide the blind to the desired destination. The time information from the GPS is used to implement an auditory watch. In addition to the aforementioned functionalities, the proposed ETA provides the blind with an intelligent universal remote controller to control their home appliances such as TV, air conditioner, etc. | en_US |