Drishtikon: An advanced navigational aid system for visually impaired people

TL;DR

This paper presents Drishtikon, a comprehensive navigational aid system for visually impaired individuals that combines object detection, depth perception, and user-guided navigation to operate effectively in unfamiliar environments.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-feature aid system integrating object detection, depth sensing, and Google Directions API for improved outdoor navigation for the visually impaired.

Findings

Detects 90 object types with high accuracy

Successfully navigates users to destinations using real-time data

Operates effectively in outdoor, unfamiliar environments

Abstract

Today, many of the aid systems deployed for visually impaired people are mostly made for a single purpose. Be it navigation, object detection, or distance perceiving. Also, most of the deployed aid systems use indoor navigation which requires a pre-knowledge of the environment. These aid systems often fail to help visually impaired people in the unfamiliar scenario. In this paper, we propose an aid system developed using object detection and depth perceivement to navigate a person without dashing into an object. The prototype developed detects 90 different types of objects and compute their distances from the user. We also, implemented a navigation feature to get input from the user about the target destination and hence, navigate the impaired person to his/her destination using Google Directions API. With this system, we built a multi-feature, high accuracy navigational aid system which can be deployed in the wild and help the visually impaired people in their daily life by navigating them effortlessly to their desired destination.