Indoor navigation assistance system for visually impaired people using multimodal technologies

Abstract

In this paper, a complete indoor navigation assistance system for visually impaired people is introduced. Different multimedia technologies are integrated in a single system in order to provide a precise, safe and friendly navigation service. First, the environment is modeled and represented. After that, the user location is determined by combining Wi-Fi and vision information. This combination offers some benefits in comparison with single technology systems such as setup cost, computational time and accuracy. Finally, the interaction between users and the system is performed through natural Vietnamese language with the support of Vietnamese voice synthesis and recognition. The proposed the system has been successfully deployed in a school for visually impaired pupils. Evaluation with various criteria on visually impaired pupils reveals the feasibility of the solution.