Ultra Wideband Signals and Systems in Communication Engineering

This paper presents a prototype to assist blind people in indoor environments.The prototype incorporates recognition and guidance units.It comprises also a voice-user interface.Tests in a public indoor space demonstrate promising capabilities. Assistive technologies for blind people are showing a fast growth, providing useful tools to support daily activities and to improve social inclusion. Most of these technologies are mainly focused on helping blind people to navigate and avoid obstacles. Other works emphasize on providing them assistance to recognize their surrounding objects. Very few of them however couple both aspects (i.e., navigation and recognition). With the aim to address the aforesaid needs, we describe in this paper an innovative prototype, which offers the capabilities to (i) move autonomously and to (ii) recognize multiple objects in public indoor environments. It incorporates lightweight hardware components (camera, IMU, and laser sensors), all mounted on a reasonably-sized integrated device to be placed on the chest. It requires the indoor environment to be 'blind-friendly', i.e., prior information about it should be prepared and loaded in the system beforehand. Its algorithms are mainly based on advanced computer vision and machine learning approaches. The interaction between the user and the system is performed through speech recognition and synthesis modules. The prototype offers to the user the possibility to (i) walk across the site to reach the desired destination, avoiding static and mobile obstacles, and (ii) ask the system through vocal interaction to list the prominent objects in the user's field of view. We illustrate the performances of the proposed prototype through experiments conducted in a blind-friendly indoor space equipped at our Department premises.

Recovering the sight to blind people in indoor environments with smart technologies

The feasibility of an electromagnetic sensor to assist the autonomous walking of visually impaired and blind users is demonstrated in this paper. It is known that the people affected by visual diseases usually walk assisted by some supports, among which the white cane is the most common. Our idea consists in applying a microwave radar on the traditional white cane making aware the user about the presence of an obstacle in a wider and safer range. Compared to the already existing electronic travel aids devices, the proposed system exhibits better performance, noise tolerance, and reduced dimensions. In the following, the latest developments of this research activity are presented, with special concern for the miniaturization of circuit board and antennas. A laboratory prototype has been designed and realized and the first test results of obstacle detection are hereby shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system.

An Electromagnetic Sensor Prototype to Assist Visually Impaired and Blind People in Autonomous Walking

Over the last decade, there has been considerable and increasing interest in the development of Active and Assisted Living (AAL) systems to support independent living. The demographic change towards an aging population has introduced new challenges to today’s society from both an economic and societal standpoint. AAL can provide an arrary of solutions for improving the quality of life of individuals, for allowing people to live healthier and independently for longer, for helping people with disabilities, and for supporting caregivers and medical staff. A vast amount of literature exists on this topic, so this paper aims to provide a survey of the research and skills related to AAL systems. A comprehensive analysis is presented that addresses the main trends towards the development of AAL systems both from technological and methodological points of view and highlights the main issues that are worthy of further investigation.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/21/10/3549/pdf

Ambient Assisted Living: A Review of Technologies, Methodologies and Future Perspectives for Healthy Aging of Population

Purpose: The aim of this review is to analyze haptic sensory substitution technologies for deaf, blind and deaf–blind individuals.Method: The literature search has been performed in Scopus, PubMed ...

Haptic-assistive technologies for audition and vision sensory disabilities

The use of electromagnetic (EM) fields for obstacle detection to aid mobility of visually impaired people is presented in this paper. The method proposed is based on the launch of EM pulses and on the measurement of the reflected signal which explores a region in front of the user of about 3 m. A laboratory system is set up, its performances (detecting the presence and the distance of obstacles) are investigated, and the measurements are compared with the data measured by an ultrasonic obstacle detection system. Results show that, with the EM system, all the obstacles tested (up to a minimum size of 3 cm × 3 cm, at a distance of 3 m) are correctly detected, as well as some specific targets (a chain, a pole, etc.) that are not visible by the ultrasonic system. The EM system has been tested in indoor and outdoor cluttered scenarios at the presence of real obstacles (single and multiple), and in all cases, it detects their presence with a signal-to-noise ratio ranging from 10 to 23 dB. Despite the use of a laboratory system, still not specifically designed for daily use, this paper demonstrates the possibility of adopting EM held pulses for obstacle detection, highlighting advantages with respect to ultrasonic systems and addressing future research activity to design an improved ad hoc EM system.

/pdf/experimental-investigation-of-electromagnetic-obstacle-hlzb5zpw07.pdf

Experimental Investigation of Electromagnetic Obstacle Detection for Visually Impaired Users: A Comparison With Ultrasonic Sensing

This paper describes the development of an electromagnetic travel aid aiming to the improvement of the mobility of blind and visually impaired subjects in unknown environments. The paper reports the preliminary results obtained with a portable prototype. They show the feasibility of the electromagnetic “cane”, the possibility to detect the presence of obstacles not detected with ordinary cane and address further improvements.

Electromagnetic travel aids for visually impaired users

The aim of this paper is to investigate the capabilities of a novel electromagnetic technique designed for contactless monitoring of breathing activity in Ambient Assisted Living applications. The method is based on the transmission of a frequency sweep and the measurement of the reflection coefficient to determine the respiration rate of a subject. To date, the method is under optimization, but it has already shown interesting capabilities of calculating not only the respiration rate, but also additional features, as the position of the subject inside a room and his/her movements. After a brief mathematical description of the algorithm, some preliminary tests will be described concerning the monitoring of a human target inside a room. These first results clearly show the capability of the method to detect the subject, his breathing rate, position and physical activity. Of course further signal processing is required in order to distinguish between different types of movements and to classify them.

Domestic Monitoring of Respiration and Movement by an Electromagnetic Sensor

In this paper, a new electro-magnetic sensing system for the indoor measurement of respiration rate and subject position is presented. The measurement system has been especially conceived for use in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) applications; therefore, a specifically designed, radiation element has been designed and realized in order to be easily installed at home. The measurement principle is based on the measurement of the reflection coefficient S11 which is operated when a frequency sweep signal is transmitted by the radiation element placed in front of the subject. S11 values are related to the distance from the reflecting object (the subject) and can be consequently related to his/her respiration activity and position. A mathematical description of the algorithm for the extraction of the aimed information, the experimental set-up and some results, obtained in a real scenario (private apartment), are reported. These results clearly show the ability of the proposed sensing system to detect the presence of the subject, to measure the respiration rate and to determine his/her position within the observed environment. The proposed solution presents therefore most of the required features in order to be used for home monitoring and AAL applications.

Multiparameter electromagnetic sensor for AAL indoor measurement of the respiration rate and position of a subject

The design of an electromagnetic (EM) novel device to be used as travel support to the mobility of visually impaired people is presented in this work. In particular, a preliminary study has been carried out using laboratory instrumentation in order to investigate the performances of an EM system in detecting obstacles located along user pathway, both in indoor and outdoor cluttered environments. Moreover, a portable EM system prototype has been realized and tested with a blind volunteer in order to both demonstrate potentialities and highlight peculiarities of using EM pulses for this application. The proposed EM system accomplishes most of the operative requirements of electronic travel aids for visually impaired subjects and can even provide additional information on obstacles, as for example height from the ground, distance and position.

V. Di Mattia

Papers

Experimental Investigation of Electromagnetic Obstacle Detection for Visually Impaired Users: A Comparison With Ultrasonic Sensing

Electromagnetic travel aids for visually impaired users

Domestic Monitoring of Respiration and Movement by an Electromagnetic Sensor

Multiparameter electromagnetic sensor for AAL indoor measurement of the respiration rate and position of a subject

An electromagnetic device for autonomous mobility of visually impaired people