In this paper we present a preliminary study about an assistive technology to support blind and visually impaired people (BVIP) in perceiving and navigating indoor environments. In the VISaVIS project we aim at designing the proof-of-concept of a new wearable device to help BVIPs in recognizing the form of the surrounding environment, thus facilitating their movements. In particular, the device is intended to create, at run-time, a sound representation of the environment captured by a head mounted RGBD camera. The underpinning idea is that, through the sonification of the video images captured by the camera, the user will progressively learn to associate the perceived sound to information like the distance, the dimension, and the format of the obstacles he/she is framing. We qualitatively validated our proposal in two challenging and general scenarios, and we grant access to demo videos to prove the effectiveness of our sonification strategy.

Video Sonification to Support Visually Impaired People: The VISaVIS Approach

Marius Onofrei;Fabio Castellini;Graziano Pravadelli;Carlo Drioli;Francesco Setti
2023-01-01

Abstract

In this paper we present a preliminary study about an assistive technology to support blind and visually impaired people (BVIP) in perceiving and navigating indoor environments. In the VISaVIS project we aim at designing the proof-of-concept of a new wearable device to help BVIPs in recognizing the form of the surrounding environment, thus facilitating their movements. In particular, the device is intended to create, at run-time, a sound representation of the environment captured by a head mounted RGBD camera. The underpinning idea is that, through the sonification of the video images captured by the camera, the user will progressively learn to associate the perceived sound to information like the distance, the dimension, and the format of the obstacles he/she is framing. We qualitatively validated our proposal in two challenging and general scenarios, and we grant access to demo videos to prove the effectiveness of our sonification strategy.
2023
978-3-031-43152-4
Video sonification, assistive technologies, electronic travel aids, blind and visually impaired
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/1104027
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 1
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact