Smart Cane Outdoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired Deaf-blind and Blind Persons

Copyright: © 2014 Chaudary B, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to build an outdoor navigation system to assist Visually Impaired (VI) persons ’ navigation independently in urban areas, regardless of the person’s hearing status. An augmented cane, magnetic point or continuous metallic trails, pulsing magnet apparatuses, and the transmission of serialized vibration braille encoded guidance are the features of the proposed navigation system. Trails of magnetic points or metal and pulsing magnet apparatuses will be installed on the sidewalks in the city centres. People with VI are able to sense the magnet points or the metallic trail through their augmented cane. This system will assist them to walk independently. Pulsing magnet apparatuses will be installed at Point of Interests (POI) on sidewalks, such as turns and other decision points, to inform persons through serialized vibrational messages. Methods: The research follows design science research framework with characteristics of prototype construction validation in Living Lab environment.Qualitative research methods (interviews and questionnaire) are employed to for user centered development process and to evaluate afterwards how well the designed artifacts meet the requirements it was set to resolve. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method will be applied to convert users