SBIR PHASE I: Individualized Guidance for the Blind (IGB)

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I program will develop and qualify a new assistive technology to aid persons who are blind. The Improved Guidance for the Blind (IGB) system will provide easy-to-follow, personalized guidance and wayfinding information for people who are blind and others needing assistance. In a separate effort, a wayfinding system for the blind using GPS for outdoor location is now being designed and built. For indoor use, however, this system requires a complex inertial guidance system for location and guidance. In this project, Talking Lights will use and qualify powerful, inexpensive Talking Lights optical locators to improve indoor wayfinding and supply GPS-like location indoors. With minimal infrastructure modification, the system will identify the user's location and desired destination, determine the preferred travel path, and provide real time Braille or audio guidance, directions and corrections. This project will demonstrate the concept of using inexpensive illumination-based Talking Lights optical locators to make very precise GPS-like guidance possible indoors. It will enable a system to be created which provides location and guidance indoors and outdoors. Context awareness is an active area for research in mobile computing and the optical location technique demonstrated here promises to be a powerful technique for context awareness indoors. Modified IGB ballast transformers will be commercial products sold to replace current ballast transformers and allow fluorescent lights to perform dual use as locators. IGB receivers will process optical signals and provide location, context awareness for the BrailleNote/VoiceNote PDA . Software developed will allow Talking Lights locators to provide GPS-like locator information indoors and permit the input of location to the PDA, updating of location and elimination of errors. The software will be a commercial product. Application areas will include museums, malls, hospitals, schools, retail stores, trade shows, transportation facilities and other places where blind travel.