Computer Vision for the Visually Impaired: The Sound of Vision System

Simona Caraiman, Anca Morar, Mateusz Owczarek, Adrian Burlacu, Dariusz Rzeszotarski, Nicolae Botezatu, Paul Herghelegiu, Florica Moldoveanu, Pawel Strumillo, Alin Moldoveanu; Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2017, pp. 1480-1489

Abstract

This paper presents a computer vision based sensory substitution device for the visually impaired. Its main objective is to provide the users with a 3D representation of the environment around them, conveyed by means of the hearing and tactile senses. One of the biggest challenges for this system is to ensure pervasiveness, i.e., to be usable in any indoor or outdoor environments and in any illumination conditions. This work reveals both the hardware (3D acquisition system) and software (3D processing pipeline) used for developing this sensory substitution device and provides insight on its exploitation in various scenarios. Preliminary experiments with blind users revealed good usability results and provided valuable feedback for system improvement.

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[bibtex]
@InProceedings{Caraiman_2017_ICCV,
author = {Caraiman, Simona and Morar, Anca and Owczarek, Mateusz and Burlacu, Adrian and Rzeszotarski, Dariusz and Botezatu, Nicolae and Herghelegiu, Paul and Moldoveanu, Florica and Strumillo, Pawel and Moldoveanu, Alin},
title = {Computer Vision for the Visually Impaired: The Sound of Vision System},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) Workshops},
month = {Oct},
year = {2017}
}