An RFID-Based Assistive Glove to Help the Visually Impaired

TL;DR

This paper presents an RFID-based assistive glove designed to help visually impaired individuals interact with their environment more effectively, achieving high object recognition accuracy and user satisfaction.

Contribution

It introduces a novel RFID-enabled wearable glove for environmental interaction, addressing gaps in existing vision rehabilitation tools.

Findings

Object identification success rate of 96.32%

70% user satisfaction rate

Effective aid for environmental interaction

Abstract

Recent studies have focused on facilitating perception and outdoor navigation for people with blindness or some form of vision loss. However, a significant portion of these studies is centered around treatment and vision rehabilitation, leaving some immediate needs, such as interaction with the surrounding objects or recognizing colors and fine patterns without tactile feedback. This study targets such needs and delivers a straightforward communication method using a wearable, unobtrusive device with the environment. We initially discuss the advantages and limitations of related works to draw out the best-fitting design concepts. Then, we introduce the potential for emerging technologies such as radio-frequency identification. We present the design details and the experimental results of an assistive glove to allow people with vision disabilities to interact with the environment more efficiently. Based on the collected data from 17 blind-folded healthy participants, the implemented system's success rate in identifying objects was about 96.32%. Overall, 70% of the users found the device very satisfactory.