Author : Jack M. Loomis
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 16 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (986 download)
Book Synopsis Personal Guidance System for Blind Persons by : Jack M. Loomis
Download or read book Personal Guidance System for Blind Persons written by Jack M. Loomis and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vision provides the richest and most important source for spatial and environmental information needed in the process of locomotion (Warren, 1978; Warren & Strelow, 1985). There is no adequate substitute for vision. Despite the existence of a selection of technical aids that partially compensate for lack of visual acWe describe some of the efforts we have made toward a navigation aid for the blind. Our long term goal is for a portable, self-contained system that will allow visually impaired individuals to travel through familiar and unfamiliar environments without the assistance of guides. The system, as it exists now, consists of the following functional modules: (1) a means of determining the traveler's position and orientation in space, (2) a Geographic Information System comprising a detailed database of our test site and functions for route planning and for obtaining information from the database, and (3) the user interface.cess to environmental information (Golledge, 1988a), the blind or vision impaired traveler must operate from a severely disadvantaged position. Not only is access to information about the immediate or proximal environment (i.e., environment of the next half-dozen or so steps) lacking, but even more important the general contextual information and spatial layout or environmental configuration is often unrealized or unknown. Even competent blind travelers who are quite familiar with a given environment can lose track of their location and their path and become disoriented or lost when distracted by unexpected barriers, unanticipated hazards, or unwanted interruptions. Recovering information about location and orientation can be an almost insurmountable task without access to appropriate environmental cues. The recovery task becomes most difficult when the individual finds herself or himself in a relatively undifferentiated open space (e.g., playing fields, parking lots,-and large pedestrian malls) where orientation and locational cues are often not available. This might also occur in the "barrier-free" and sometimes cue-less interior spaces of large buildings (e.g., institutions such as libraries, hospitals, public buildings, museums and so on). For safe and expeditious travel, way-finders must have access to a considerable amount of declarative or landmark information. Depending on the environment this may include things such as sequences of driveways, telephone poles, doors, entrance ways to buildings, intersections, breezeways, noises, smells, wind, sun angle, and so on (Welsh & Blasche, 1980; Wiedel, 1983; Tatham & Dodds, 1988). Many blind travelers acquire their knowledge base with the help of professional orientation and mobility instructors. They rely heavily upon learning segment sequences (i.e. route knowledge), along with specific actions such as direction changes or path crossing at specific choice or decision points.
