Assisting and Guiding Visually Impaired in Indoor Environments

Abstract

This paper presents a new intelligent robotic system to assist or guide visually impaired people. The robotic system, which is equipped with a visual sensor, laser range finders, speaker, gives visually impaired people information about the environment around them. The laser data are analyzed using the clustering technique, making it possible to detect obstacles, steps and stairs. The PC analysis the sensors data and send information to the visually impaired people by natural language or beep signal. In the guide mode, the robot navigates controlled by evolved neural networks. By selecting the target location, the robot starts guiding the user toward the goal. The robot switches between neural controllers based on the robot location as it navigates in the environment. The usefulness of the proposed system is examined experimentally.