Indoor Route Modeling and Guidance Method for Visually Impaired Wayfinding

Project Description The proposed project seeks to identify and refine a suitable indoor positioning solution for use with the community driven Hello Navi educational infrastructure accessibility initiative and improve the state of the art of indoor wayfinding options for the visually impaired We outline a Phase project to create a validation testbed in an environment with known sight impaired mobility characteristics using a realistic multi level educational setting As the basis for our test bed construction we will instrument two buildings at the Carroll Center for the Blind to support our experiment to achieve enhanced accuracy using a crowdsourced differential correction basis applied to two disparate positioning characteristics location services supplied geo location and user supplied pedometer counts adjusted for anthropometric variance These two positioning characteristics will be combined with a database schema indexed to provide for bulk location of the user within the building serviced and then establish the point of entry into our accuracy enhanced relative reference frame In Phase we will conduct an aggressive indoor positioning solution overview with the intent of using the most promising elements and methods available in conjunction with our data driven approach to produce enhanced accuracy and crowdsourced participation for indoor positioning solutions By managing sparse collections of location reporting services data throughout the D indoor floorplan and supplementing this with pedometer calculated route lengths we envision a system benefitting from two alternative positioning characteristics one is based on sample average pedometer derived route lengths between designated points of interest POI and the other is based on remote positioning provided by GPS and WiFi based location reporting services We combine this positioning basis with an infrastructure based component consisting of affixed NFC tags located throughout the floorplan Vertical displacement and floorplan indexing strategy for multi level environments is addressed using a supplemental approach consisting of vertical access points being identified with the affixed NFC tags and a vertical accelerometer disturbance trigger to validate upward or downward motion complemented by user based confirmation of multi level floorplan availability and selection We also plan a multi role commercial web portal as a basis for fostering activism and participation in facilities accessibility improvement within educational facilities nationwide Our proposed Phase I test bed will provide a basis for quantifying the availability and accuracy of indoor location services and the error concerns related to lengthy pedometer displacement dependencies within or solution Crowd data collection methods will be employed to establish that commercial cell phone location reporting combined with descriptive POI meta data and normalize pedometer counts can be used to improve the scale and orientation modelling accuracy of a three dimensional route plan for an indoor environment and that the data can be formatted sufficiently to support playback technology for delivering a usable electronic guide rope service for those with vision impairment The goal for Phase is to isolate a most effective positioning solution for use with the Hello Navi initiative We will employ adaptive design response during Phase to produce a proposal for Phase production engineering of the most promising indoor positioning solution Note for this resubmission material revisions have been introduced to our Project Description Specific Aims Research Strategy and References Cited along with the required Introduction detailing this re submitted application Narrative Development of an effective indoor guidance service for the visually impaired will enable independent access to unfamiliar buildings This increased self reliance while finding their way around in public will directly benefit individual performance in the workplace and the classroom The physical and psychological stress associated with extensive indoor route memorization and rehearsal will be reduced by a technology that fosters a rapid adaptation to new and unfamiliar environments A robust and confident ability to find and locate points of interest within public buildings will help the blind on a larger scale to achieve more successful outcomes in higher education and employment