Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera Phone

<p/> <p>A major challenge faced by the blind and visually impaired population is that of wayfinding&#8212;the ability of a person to find his or her way to a given destination. We propose a new wayfinding aid based on a camera cell phone, which is held by the user to find and read al...

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Main Authors: Manduchi Roberto, Coughlan James
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SpringerOpen 2007-01-01
Series:EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing
Online Access:http://jivp.eurasipjournals.com/content/2007/096357
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spelling doaj-6e28bd43197146e08a7b2deb8a6e18202020-11-25T02:33:35ZengSpringerOpenEURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing1687-51761687-52812007-01-0120071096357Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera PhoneManduchi RobertoCoughlan James<p/> <p>A major challenge faced by the blind and visually impaired population is that of wayfinding&#8212;the ability of a person to find his or her way to a given destination. We propose a new wayfinding aid based on a camera cell phone, which is held by the user to find and read aloud specially designed machine-readable signs, which we call color targets, in indoor environments (labeling locations such as offices and restrooms). Our main technical innovation is that we have designed the color targets to be detected and located in fractions of a second on the cell phone CPU, even at a distance of several meters. Once the sign has been quickly detected, nearby information in the form of a barcode can be read, an operation that typically requires more computational time. An important contribution of this paper is a principled method for optimizing the design of the color targets and the color target detection algorithm based on training data, instead of relying on heuristic choices as in our previous work. We have implemented the system on Nokia 7610 cell phone, and preliminary experiments with blind subjects demonstrate the feasibility of using the system as a real-time wayfinding aid.</p> http://jivp.eurasipjournals.com/content/2007/096357
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Manduchi Roberto
Coughlan James
spellingShingle Manduchi Roberto
Coughlan James
Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera Phone
EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing
author_facet Manduchi Roberto
Coughlan James
author_sort Manduchi Roberto
title Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera Phone
title_short Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera Phone
title_full Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera Phone
title_fullStr Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera Phone
title_full_unstemmed Color Targets: Fiducials to Help Visually Impaired People Find Their Way by Camera Phone
title_sort color targets: fiducials to help visually impaired people find their way by camera phone
publisher SpringerOpen
series EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing
issn 1687-5176
1687-5281
publishDate 2007-01-01
description <p/> <p>A major challenge faced by the blind and visually impaired population is that of wayfinding&#8212;the ability of a person to find his or her way to a given destination. We propose a new wayfinding aid based on a camera cell phone, which is held by the user to find and read aloud specially designed machine-readable signs, which we call color targets, in indoor environments (labeling locations such as offices and restrooms). Our main technical innovation is that we have designed the color targets to be detected and located in fractions of a second on the cell phone CPU, even at a distance of several meters. Once the sign has been quickly detected, nearby information in the form of a barcode can be read, an operation that typically requires more computational time. An important contribution of this paper is a principled method for optimizing the design of the color targets and the color target detection algorithm based on training data, instead of relying on heuristic choices as in our previous work. We have implemented the system on Nokia 7610 cell phone, and preliminary experiments with blind subjects demonstrate the feasibility of using the system as a real-time wayfinding aid.</p>
url http://jivp.eurasipjournals.com/content/2007/096357
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AT coughlanjames colortargetsfiducialstohelpvisuallyimpairedpeoplefindtheirwaybycameraphone
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