Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired
The development of computer vision based systems dedicated to help visually impaired people to perceive the environment, to orientate and navigate has been the main research subject of many works in the recent years. A significant ensemble of resources has been employed to support the development of...
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doaj-0ca180b1be6c4886894099aa160f34d12020-11-25T02:10:50ZengMDPI AGSensors1424-82202019-06-011912277110.3390/s19122771s19122771Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually ImpairedSimona Caraiman0Otilia Zvoristeanu1Adrian Burlacu2Paul Herghelegiu3Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering,“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, D. Mangeron 27, 700050 Iasi, RomaniaFaculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering,“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, D. Mangeron 27, 700050 Iasi, RomaniaFaculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering,“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, D. Mangeron 27, 700050 Iasi, RomaniaFaculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering,“Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, D. Mangeron 27, 700050 Iasi, RomaniaThe development of computer vision based systems dedicated to help visually impaired people to perceive the environment, to orientate and navigate has been the main research subject of many works in the recent years. A significant ensemble of resources has been employed to support the development of sensory substitution devices (SSDs) and electronic travel aids for the rehabilitation of the visually impaired. The Sound of Vision (SoV) project used a comprehensive approach to develop such an SSD, tackling all the challenging aspects that so far restrained the large scale adoption of such systems by the intended audience: Wearability, real-time operation, pervasiveness, usability, cost. This article is set to present the artificial vision based component of the SoV SSD that performs the scene reconstruction and segmentation in outdoor environments. In contrast with the indoor use case, where the system acquires depth input from a structured light camera, in outdoors SoV relies on stereo vision to detect the elements of interest and provide an audio and/or haptic representation of the environment to the user. Our stereo-based method is designed to work with wearable acquisition devices and still provide a real-time, reliable description of the scene in the context of unreliable depth input from the stereo correspondence and of the complex 6 DOF motion of the head-worn camera. We quantitatively evaluate our approach on a custom benchmarking dataset acquired with SoV cameras and provide the highlights of the usability evaluation with visually impaired users.https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/12/2771visual impairmentsensory substitutionstereo vision3D reconstructionobstacle detection |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Simona Caraiman Otilia Zvoristeanu Adrian Burlacu Paul Herghelegiu |
spellingShingle |
Simona Caraiman Otilia Zvoristeanu Adrian Burlacu Paul Herghelegiu Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired Sensors visual impairment sensory substitution stereo vision 3D reconstruction obstacle detection |
author_facet |
Simona Caraiman Otilia Zvoristeanu Adrian Burlacu Paul Herghelegiu |
author_sort |
Simona Caraiman |
title |
Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired |
title_short |
Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired |
title_full |
Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired |
title_fullStr |
Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired |
title_full_unstemmed |
Stereo Vision Based Sensory Substitution for the Visually Impaired |
title_sort |
stereo vision based sensory substitution for the visually impaired |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
series |
Sensors |
issn |
1424-8220 |
publishDate |
2019-06-01 |
description |
The development of computer vision based systems dedicated to help visually impaired people to perceive the environment, to orientate and navigate has been the main research subject of many works in the recent years. A significant ensemble of resources has been employed to support the development of sensory substitution devices (SSDs) and electronic travel aids for the rehabilitation of the visually impaired. The Sound of Vision (SoV) project used a comprehensive approach to develop such an SSD, tackling all the challenging aspects that so far restrained the large scale adoption of such systems by the intended audience: Wearability, real-time operation, pervasiveness, usability, cost. This article is set to present the artificial vision based component of the SoV SSD that performs the scene reconstruction and segmentation in outdoor environments. In contrast with the indoor use case, where the system acquires depth input from a structured light camera, in outdoors SoV relies on stereo vision to detect the elements of interest and provide an audio and/or haptic representation of the environment to the user. Our stereo-based method is designed to work with wearable acquisition devices and still provide a real-time, reliable description of the scene in the context of unreliable depth input from the stereo correspondence and of the complex 6 DOF motion of the head-worn camera. We quantitatively evaluate our approach on a custom benchmarking dataset acquired with SoV cameras and provide the highlights of the usability evaluation with visually impaired users. |
topic |
visual impairment sensory substitution stereo vision 3D reconstruction obstacle detection |
url |
https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/12/2771 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT simonacaraiman stereovisionbasedsensorysubstitutionforthevisuallyimpaired AT otiliazvoristeanu stereovisionbasedsensorysubstitutionforthevisuallyimpaired AT adrianburlacu stereovisionbasedsensorysubstitutionforthevisuallyimpaired AT paulherghelegiu stereovisionbasedsensorysubstitutionforthevisuallyimpaired |
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