Enhanced navigation systems in GPS denied environments for visually impaired people: A Survey

TL;DR

This survey reviews various indoor navigation systems for visually impaired individuals, comparing ultrasonic, RFID, computer vision, and smartphone-based solutions, highlighting their techniques and effectiveness in GPS-denied environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview and comparison of existing indoor navigation methods for visually impaired people, emphasizing their technological differences and practical applications.

Findings

Ultrasonic and RFID systems are effective for indoor localization.

Computer vision and smartphone solutions offer versatile navigation aids.

Different techniques vary in accuracy, cost, and ease of use.

Abstract

Although outdoor navigation systems are mostly dependent on GPS, indoor systems have to rely upon different techniques for localizing the user, due to unavailability of GPS signals in indoor environments. Over the past decade various indoor navigation systems have been developed. In this paper an overview of some existing indoor navigation systems for visually impaired people are presented and they are compared from different perspectives. The evaluated techniques are ultrasonic systems, RFID-based solutions, computer vision aided navigation systems, ans smartphone-based applications.