Design and development of an indoor navigation system for visual disabilities

• Main Author: Yuan, Zhefang
• Other Authors: Ma Maode
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/60200
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

To better assist the visually impaired people in their daily life, many works and efforts have been made in this area. The most important issue is to facilitate the transportation needs of these people. However, due to the limitation of GPS technology in some particular area such as hospital, shopping mall and other indoor areas, the indoor navigation system for visually impaired people still needs more efforts to be made. And it gave rise to the initiative of this project. This Final Year Project Report records the planning and development of an Android-based, indoor navigation system for visually impaired people. The platform will be on Android and an Android application will implement most of the functions needed for this project including data exchange/processing and voice navigation. During the implementation of the project, the Bluetooth technology is studied and used in this project for the reason that it serves as the major connection channel between the RFID sensor and the Android device. The protocol of the RFID sensor is also studied and implemented for the processing of data retrieved from the device. On the other hand, the voice recognition theory is well studied in this project to implement the user interface with the visually impaired. The Android application will record the voice command from the user and, after translating and processing, the application will provide the location and navigation function to facilitate the movement need of the user. Finally, a graphical user interface (GUI) is designed and realized on the Acer Iconia A1 tablet to display real time RFID tag ID and signal values retrieved.