Abstract
At present, when an individual who is blind or has low-vision runs or walks for exercise, they might use a treadmill, rely on a guide dog, or use a tethered human guide. Independent and safe exercise, whether walking or running, is one way to increase personal agency and improve the quality of life for vision-impaired persons. This disclosure describes techniques that use on-device machine learning to enable a vision-impaired individual to independently walk or run, e.g., for exercise. A tape or guideline is painted along the running path. A mobile device camera detects the guideline. An app on the phone estimates the user's position to the left or to the right of the guideline. The app provides audio cues in stereo to direct the person to stay in close proximity to the guideline while walking or running.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Burke, Ryan; Sirotenko, Mikhail; Meron, Tomer; Watkinson, John; Hall, Matt; Ayalon, Dror; and Yang, Xuan, "Audio Guidance to Enable Vision-Impaired Individuals to Move Independently", Technical Disclosure Commons, (May 20, 2021)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/4310