An intelligent assistant for navigation of visually impaired people

Abstract

This paper presents the navigation methodology employed by an intelligent assistant (agent) for people with disabilities. In particular, the intelligent assistant, called Tyflos, would help a visually impaired user to be partially independent and able to walk and work in a 3D dynamic environment. The Tyflos system carries two vision cameras and captures images from the surrounding 3D environment, either by the user's command or in a continuous mode (video), then it converts these images into verbal descriptions for each image into a verbal communication with the user. In other words the system plays the role of human assistant, who describes to the user the 3D visual environment.