Guiding Blind People with Haptic Feedback

Ieee Transactions on Haptics, 2015

We propose a vibrotactile interface in the form of a belt for guiding blind walkers. This interface enables blind walkers to receive haptic directional instructions along complex paths without negatively impacting users' ability to listen and/or perceive the environment the way some auditory directional instructions do. The belt interface was evaluated in a controlled study with 10 blind individuals and compared to the audio guidance. The experiments were videotaped and the participants' behaviors and comments were content analyzed. Completion times and deviations from ideal paths were also collected and statistically analyzed. By triangulating the quantitative and qualitative data, we found that the belt resulted in closer path following to the expense of speed. In general, the participants were positive about the use of vibrotactile belt to provide directional guidance.

2006

Navigation and wayfinding are difficult tasks for blind or visually impaired pedestrians. A long cane and maybe a guide dog are the helping companions for avoiding obstacles on the way. Gross navigation, i.e., the task to find the way from one point to another can only partly be achieved by this support. With the advent of positioning and navigation systems, electronic navigation aids for the blind have been proposed. However, the existing speech-based systems use the most relevant modality of blind persons, the ears, and do not allow a non-intrusive navigation support. Haptic approaches which provide continuously and non-intrusively navigation information and which are suitable for blind people do not exist. A major challenge for such a system is to present not only directional cues for specific points of interests, but rather to keep a blind or visually impaired person on track of the route during the whole navigation process. In this paper, we present an approach of a somatosensory navigation support that uses three vibrators to provide a pedestrian continuously and non-obtrusively with information about the way, deviations from the path, and directions. Controlled by a PDA and based on the input of a GPS receiver and a digital compass, the lightweight prototype delivers vibration signals of different intensity to the upper arms and the back. Additional, infrequent speech commands support the wayfinding task. Our first tests are promising and we plan a revised version of the prototype that further reduces the necessary hardware and also include additional interaction and information patterns.

Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Human computer interaction with mobile devices and services - MobileHCI '08, 2008

In this paper, we present a solution for supporting vibrotactile feedback in mobile museum guides for blind users. To this end, we have designed and implemented a hardware/software module, which can be easily plugged into current PDAs to assist blind users in orientation. The solution, which comprises a twochannels haptic module as well as vocal support, has been exploited for moving through tagged objects. We also report on a user evaluation carried out with a number of blind users.

This paper describes the development of an indoor vibrotactile navigation system for the visually impaired people. We aimed at realizing a wearable, low-cost, and effective system able to help blind users in unknown indoor environments that they might visit occasionally, such as hospitals, airports, museums, etc. The designed system implements a Bluetooth (BT) localization service, and provides wayfinding cues to the user by means of a wearable device equipped with five motors. The last part of our work describes early results obtained by the use of electroencephalographic (EEG) analysis to evaluate the vibrotactile feedback.

ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and …, 2006

2022

Navigation and obstacle avoidance are some of the hardest tasks for the visually impaired. Recent research projects have proposed technological solutions to tackle this problem. So far most systems fail to provide multidimensional feedback while working under various lighting conditions. We present a novel obstacle avoidance system by combining a 3D camera with a haptic feedback sleeve. Our system uses the distance information of the camera and maps it onto a 2D vibration array on the forearm. In our functionality tests of the haptic feedback sleeve, users were able to correctly identify and localize 98,6% of single motor vibration patterns and 70% of multidirectional and multi-motor vibration patterns. The combined obstacle avoidance system was evaluated on a testing route in the dark, simulating a navigation task. All users were able to complete the task and showed performance improvement over multiple runs. The system is independent of lighting conditions and can be used indoors ...

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Studying Hasidism: Sources, Methods, Perspectives, 2019

Hasidism, a Jewish religious movement that originated in Poland in the eighteenth century, today counts over 700,000 adherents, primarily in the U.S., Israel, and the UK. Popular and scholarly interest in Hasidic Judaism and Hasidic Jews is growing, but there is no textbook dedicated to research methods in the field, nor sources for the history of Hasidism have been properly recognized. Studying Hasidism, edited by Marcin Wodziński, an internationally recognized historian of Hasidism, aims to remedy this gap. The work’s thirteen chapters each draws upon a set of different sources, many of them previously untapped, including folklore, music, big data, and material culture to demonstrate what is still to be achieved in the study of Hasidism. Ultimately, this textbook presents research methods that can decentralize the role community leaders play in the current literature and reclaim the everyday lives of Hasidic Jews.

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