Title: Top-View-Based Guidance for Blind People Using Directional Ellipse Model
Abstract:The guidance system proposed in this paper aims to complement the white cane by monitoring road conditions in a medium range for blind pedestrians in real time. The system prototype employs only one w...The guidance system proposed in this paper aims to complement the white cane by monitoring road conditions in a medium range for blind pedestrians in real time. The system prototype employs only one webcam fixed at the waist of user. One of the main difficulties of using a single camera in outdoor obstacle detection is the discrimination of obstacles from a complex background. To solve this problem, this paper re-formulates top-view mapping as an inhomogeneous re-sampling process, so that background edges are sub-sampled while obstacle edges are oversampled in the top-view domain. Morphology filters are then used to enhance obstacle edges as edge-blobs, which are further represented using a directional ellipse as a new model for obstacle classification. Based on the identified obstacles, safe walking area is estimated by tracking a polar edge-blob histogram. To transfer the information obtained from image domain to language domain, this paper proposes a verbal message generation scheme based on fuzzy logic. The efficiency of the system is confirmed by testing the system with visually impaired people on outdoor pedestrian paths.Read More
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'doaj']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 9
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