Stereo Image Sonification for Blind Navigation

G. Balakrishnan ； G. Sainarayanan ； R. Nagarajan ； Sazali Yaacob

《淡江理工學刊》 10卷1期 (2007/03) Pp. 67-76

https://doi.org/10.6180/jase.2007.10.1.08

並列摘要

Visually impaired find their navigation difficult as they often lack the needed information for bypassing obstacles and hazards. Electronic Travel Aids (ETAs) are devices that use sensor technology to assist and improve the blind user's mobility in terms of safety and speed. Modern ETAs does not provide distance information directly and clearly. This paper proposes a method for determining distance using a stereo matching method to help blind individuals for their navigation. The system developed in this work, named Stereo Vision based Electronic Travel Aid (SVETA), consists of a computing device, stereo cameras and stereo earphones, all molded in a helmet. An improved area based stereo matching is performed over the transformed images to calculate dense disparity image. Low texture filter and left/right consistency check are carried out to remove the noises and to highlight the obstacles. A sonification procedure is proposed to map the disparity image to stereo musical sound, which has information about the features of the scene infront of the user. The sound is conveyed to the blind user through stereo headphones. Experimentations have been conducted and preliminary investigations have proven the viability of this method for applying in real time environment.

並列關鍵字

Stereo Matching ； Electronic Travel Aid ； Disparity ； Stereo Vision ； Sonification