Sign Finding and Reading SFAR on GPU Accelerated Mobile Devices

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The inability to access information on printed signs directly impacts the mobility independence of the over 1.2 million blind persons in the U.S. Many previously proposed technological solutions to this problem either required physical modifications to the environment (talking signs or the placement of coded markers) or required the user to carry around specialized computational equipment, which can be stigmatizing. A recently pursued strategy is to utilize the computational capabilities of smart phones and techniques from computer vision to allow blind persons to read signs at a distance using commercially available, non-stigmatizing, smart- phones. However, despite the fact that sophisticated algorithms exist to recognize and extract sign text from cluttered video input (as evidenced, for example, by mapping services such as Google Maps automatically locating and blurring out only license plate text in street-view maps) current mobile solutions for reading sign tex