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Session: Prostheses
Session starts: Thursday 24 January, 13:30
Presentation starts: 14:15
Room: Lecture room 558

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Jing Yu (ITeM)
Miguel Reyes Adame (ITeM)
Knut Möller (ITeM)

Abstract:
According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 million have low vision. For them, a regular cane and guide dog are the widely accepted travel assistive devices. Advances of technology and better knowledge in human 3D world perception permit the design and development of wearable and portable devices assisting visually impaired. It is proposed to design, simulate and implement an assistive wearable navigation device for visual impaired. This device facilitates the wearer's ability to perform normal tasks without feeling encumbered. A 3D camera captures images from the surrounding environment and after appropriate information reduction 3D representations are created. To avoid the degradation and overload of the hearing sense, the 3D information shall be transferred to the cognitive system via the stimulation of skin receptors. This paper focuses on the evaluation of a special belt. Small vibration motors are used as a major component of the belt and the location of motors are adjustable. Tactile display presents information to the wearers. Three parameters of the belt were evaluated. Five healthy volunteers participated in a preliminary study. According to the result, the duration of the vibration and its location could be used for spatial orientation. Then a simple computer game was developed to simulate an environment with obstacles. Healthy people were involved as test subjects and faced the task to avoid collisions in the game. Their performance under the visible and invisible circumstances was obtained and compared. In the case of blindfold, the recommended actions were directly transmitted to the subjects via the vibration motors. The belt was proved to be easy to use while no special training was required. REFERENCES [1] World Health Organization, “Visual impairment and blindness” - Fact Sheet N°282 (2012). Available online at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/ [2] K. Möller, F. Toth, L. Wang, J. Möller, K. O. Arras, M. Bach, S. Schumann, and J. Guttmann, “Enhanced perception for visually impaired people”, in 3rd International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering (iCBBE), (IEEE, Beijing, China, 2009), 2009. [3] K. Möller, J. Möller, K. O. Arras, M. Bach, S. Schumann, and J. Guttmann, “Enhanced perception for visually impaired people evaluated in a real time setting”, in WC 2009, IFMBE Proceedings, O. Dössel and W. C. Schlegel, Eds., (Springer, Munich, Germany, 2009), vol. 25/4, pp. 283-6, 2009. [4] K. Möller, J. Möller, K. Arras, and M. Bach, “Intelligent information reduction to guide visually impaired people”, in 55. GMDS-Jahrestagung, P. Schmücker, et al., Eds., (Antares Verlag, Mannheim, Germany, 2010), pp. 544-5, 2010.