CRISS: A Collaborative Route Information Sharing System for Visually Impaired Travelers

720 Chapter XXXV CRISS: A Collaborative Route Information Sharing System for Visually Impaired Travelers John Nicholson Computer Science Assistive Technology Laboratory, Utah State University, USA Vladimir Kulyukin Computer Science Assistive Technology Laboratory, Utah State University, USAAbstrActLimited sensory information about a new environment often requires people with a visual impairmentto rely on sighted guides for showing or describing routes around the environment. However, routedescriptions provided by other blind independent navigators, (e.g., over a cell phone), can also be usedto guide a traveler along a previously unknown route. A visually impaired guide can often describe aroute as well or better than a sighted person since the guide is familiar with the issues of blind naviga-tion. This chapter introduces a Collaborative Route Information Sharing System (CRISS). CRISS is acollaborative online environment where visually impaired and sighted people will be able to share andmanage route descriptions for indoor and outdoor environments. It then describes the system’s RouteAnalysis Engine module which takes advantage of information extraction techniques to find landmarksin natural language route descriptions written by independent blind navigators.1. IntroductIon Someone just beginning to adjust to a new visual impairment may find a decrease in the ability toFor a person who has a visual impairment, having travel independently, which can lead to depres-the ability to be mobile without the aid of another sion (Blasch, Wiener, & Welsh, 1992). The abilityperson is a sign of personal independence. It is to travel independently is also a quality of lifeimportant enough that a lack of mobile indepen- issue. A 1991 survey in Britain of almost sixdence can affect an individual’s mental health. hundred adults with visual impairments foundCopyright © 2009, IGI Global, distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.

CRISSthat only 51% of those surveyed under the age of Unfortunately, due to noise in the environment,60 had left their house alone and on foot in the signals can be noisy or missing resulting in in-week prior to the interview (Bruce, Mckennell, correct location computation. Garmin (2008), for& Walker, 1991). example, reports that its GPS units are accurate In order to address the need for indoor and to within 15 meters. This amount of error may beoutdoor navigation assistance in unfamiliar acceptable for a sighted person who can make aenvironments, both commercial and research visual distinction between where the device sayssystems have been developed using various he is standing and where he is actually standing.technologies such as GPS (Ran, Helal, & Moore For a person who is visually impaired, especially2004; Sendero, 2008), Wi-Fi-based localization those who have complete vision loss, an error of(LaMarca, et al, 2005), and infrared beacons this amount reduces the usefulness of the device.(Crandall, Bentzen, Myers, & Brabyn, 2001). If a person who is visually impaired is continu-Unfortunately, the adoption rate for these devices ally given an inaccurate location, they may atin the blind community remains low. There are best simply stop using the navigation device ormultiple reasons for this lack of adoption. First, at worst become disoriented and lost.the commercial devices tend to be expensive. For One sensor that previous systems have notexample, the software and GPS-based guidance taken into account is the navigator himself. Manysystem Sendero GPS (Sendero, 2008), intended people who have a visual impairment receive ex-to be used by an individual, costs $1,495, a price tensive orientation and mobility (O&M) training.which does not include the mobile computer During training, individuals learn valuable skillson which to run the software. Other navigation which enable them to safely and successfullysystems do not achieve localization accuracies navigate many environments independently, bothwhich would be useful for a blind person in many indoors and outdoors (Blasch, Wiener, & Welsh,situations. Place Lab (LaMarca, et al, 2005), for 1997). They learn, for example, to perform actionsexample, achieves a median location error of 15 such as following sidewalks, detecting obstaclesto 20 meters. Other systems (Crandall, Bentzen, and landmarks, and crossing streets. They alsoMyers, & Brabyn, 2001; Talking Lights, 2008; learn techniques for remaining oriented as theyPriyantha, Chakraborty, & Balakrishnan, 2000) move around inside buildings or outside onrequire a device or sensor to be installed in the sidewalks and streets. Experienced travelers canenvironment. The problems are that each device even handle some unfamiliar environments whenmust often have a power source, or the systems given sufficient verbal assistance. There is somemust be calibrated and maintained. These systems research evidence (Gaunet & Briffault, 2005;do not scale to large-scale environments, such as Kulyukin, Nicholson, Ross, Marston, & Gaunet,college campuses, where navigational assistance 2008) that people with visual impairments sharewould be needed over a large area. A final issue route descriptions and can verbally guide eachis that most systems only address either indoor or other over cell phones. In these situations, onlyoutdoor navigation, but not both. A navigational verbal route descriptions are used to guide theassistance device should ideally address both traveler from one location to another location;environments. the only technology used is the cell phone which Almost all navigation devices take the “trust simply maintains an audio connection betweenme - you are here” approach. In general, they the two individuals.take a reading from their sensor set, compute a Inspired by the possibility of the navigatorlocation on a map, and, based on the user’s des- being an active part of the navigation system, wetination, instruct the user where to move next. developed ShopTalk, a wearable device for helping 721

20 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Purchase" button on the products webpage: www.igi-global.com/chapter/criss-collaborative-route-information- sharing/35754 This title is available in InfoSci-Books, InfoSci-Multimedia Technologies, Semantic Web and Web Services, Business-Technology-Solution. Recommend this product to your librarian: www.igi-global.com/forms/refer-database-to-librarian.aspx?id=35754Related ContentInductive Classification of Semantically Annotated Resources through Reduced Coulomb EnergyNetworksNicola Fanizzi, Claudia d’Amato and Floriana Esposito (2009). International Journal on Semantic Web andInformation Systems (pp. 19-38).www.igi-global.com/article/inductive-classification-semantically-annotated-resources/41735Automatically Integrating Heterogeneous Ontologies from Structured Web PagesShiren Ye and Tat-Seng Chua (2007). International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems(pp. 99-114).www.igi-global.com/article/automatically-integrating-heterogeneous-ontologies-structured/2836Semantics for the Semantic Web: The Implicit, the Formal and the PowerfulAmit Sheth, Cartic Ramakrishnan and Christopher Thomas (2005). International Journal on Semantic Weband Information Systems (pp. 1-18).www.igi-global.com/article/semantics-semantic-web/2802Locating Doctors using Social and Semantic Web Technologies: The MedFinder ApproachAlejandro Rodríguez-González, Ángel García-Crespo, Ricardo Colomo-Palacios, José Emilio Labra-Gayoand Juan Miguel Gómez Berbís (2011). Semantic Web Personalization and Context Awareness:Management of Personal Identities and Social Networking (pp. 94-106).www.igi-global.com/chapter/locating-doctors-using-social-semantic/52869

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CRISS: A Collaborative Route Information Sharing System for Visually Impaired Travelers

by Vladimir Kulyukin on Dec 21, 2011

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CRISS: A Collaborative Route Information Sharing System for Visually Impaired Travelers — Document Transcript