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Bone-Conduction Audio Interface to Guide People with Visual Impairments

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Smart City and Informatization (iSCI 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1122))

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Abstract

The ActiVis project’s aim is to build a mobile guidance aid to help people with limited vision find objects in an unknown environment. This system uses bone-conduction headphones to transmit audio signals to the user and requires an effective non-visual interface. To this end, we propose a new audio-based interface that uses a spatialised signal to convey a target’s position on the horizontal plane. The vertical position on the median plan is given by adjusting the tone’s pitch to overcome the audio localisation limitations of bone-conduction headphones. This interface is validated through a set of experiments with blindfolded and visually impaired participants.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://lcas.github.io/ActiVis/.

  2. 2.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tango_(platform).

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Acknowledgements

This research is partly supported by a Google Faculty Research Award. We would like to thank the Voluntary Centre Services UK for their help in facilitating the experiments with people with limited vision.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lincoln, Lincoln, LN6 7TS, UK

    Jacobus C. Lock, Grzegorz Cielniak & Nicola Bellotto

  2. University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TH, UK

    Iain D. Gilchrist

Authors
  1. Jacobus C. Lock
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  2. Iain D. Gilchrist
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  3. Grzegorz Cielniak
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  4. Nicola Bellotto
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacobus C. Lock .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

    Guojun Wang

  2. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Abdulmotaleb El Saddik

  3. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Xuejia Lai

  4. University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Gregorio Martinez Perez

  5. The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

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Lock, J.C., Gilchrist, I.D., Cielniak, G., Bellotto, N. (2019). Bone-Conduction Audio Interface to Guide People with Visual Impairments. In: Wang, G., El Saddik, A., Lai, X., Martinez Perez, G., Choo, KK. (eds) Smart City and Informatization. iSCI 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1122. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1301-5_43

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1301-5_43

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-1301-5

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