Abstract—This paper describes the development of a wearable navigation aid for blind and visually impaired persons to facilitate their movement in unfamiliar indoor environments. It comprises of a Kinect unit, a Tablet PC, a microcontroller, IMU sensors, and vibration actuators. It minimizes reliance on audio instructions for avoiding obstacles and instead guides the blind through gentle vibrations produced in a wearable belt and a light helmet. By differentiating obstacles from the floor, it can detect even relatively small-size obstacles. It can also guide the blind to reach a desired destination (office/room/elevator) within an unfamiliar building with the help of 2-D printed codes, RGB camera of Kinect unit, a compass sensor for orienting the user towards the next direction of movement, and synthesized audio instructions. The developed navigation system has been successfully tested by both blind-folded and blind persons.

Index Terms—Electronic mobility aid, navigation assistance system, obstacle detection for visually impaired.

M. M. Al-Shehabi was with the Department of Electrical Engineering at Ajman University of Science and Technology, Ajman, UAE.
M. Mir, Abdullah M. Ali, and Ahmed M. Ali are with Ajman University of Science and Technology, Ajman, UAE (e-mail: m.mir@ ajman.ac.ae).

Cite:Monther M. Al-Shehabi, Mustahsan Mir, Abdullah M. Ali, and Ahmed M. Ali, "An Obstacle Detection and Guidance System for Mobility of Visually Impaired in Unfamiliar Indoor Environments," International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 337-341, 2014.