Abstract
This paper proposes a novel camera-based bus detection and route number recognition system for visually impaired people. Visually impaired people face several challenges in their daily life of which mobility is a major issue. A major challenge is safe and independent commuting by making use of public transportation systems like buses. Visually impaired people are unable to recognize a particular public bus and read the route numbers. The aids currently available have limited functionalities and are based on technologies that have a steep learning curve. The main feature of the proposed system is that it is effectively able to detect the bus and recognize the bus number in a cluttered and noisy scene using SIFT features, OCR, and various normalization processes. It then tells the destination of the bus as an audio output to the visually impaired person. Steps were also taken to ensure feature scaling is done, so that no feature gets overlooked. The five algorithms discussed in the paper are decision tree which gave an accuracy of 87.63%, random forest that provided an accuracy of 83.84%, support vector machine that gave an accuracy of 83.75%, K-nearest neighbor that provided an accuracy of 82.68%, and logistic regression that gave an accuracy of 83.59%.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
WHO (2022) Vision impairment and blindness. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/
Ye C, Qian X (2018) 3-D object recognition of a robotic navigation aid for the visually impaired. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng 26(2):441–450. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2017.2748419
Ponnada S, Yarramalle S, Rao TVM (2018) A hybrid approach for identification of manhole and staircase to assist visually challenged. IEEE Access 6:41013–41022. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2852723
Mancini A, Frontoni E, Zingaretti P (2018) Mechatronic system to help visually impaired users during walking and running. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 19(2):649–660. https://doi.org/10.1109/TITS.2017.2780621
Kantawong S (2007) Road traffic signs detection and classification for blind man navigation system. In: 2007 International conference on control, automation and systems. IEEE, pp 847–852. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCAS.2007.4407019
Ying J, Tian J, Lei L (2015) Traffic light detection based on similar shapes searching for visually impaired person. In: 2015 Sixth international conference on intelligent control and information processing (ICICIP). IEEE, pp 376–380. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICICIP.2015.7388200
Tian S, Zheng M, Zou W, Li X, Zhang L (2021) Dynamic crosswalk scene understanding for the visually impaired. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng 29:1478–1486. https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSRE.2021.3096379
Tatsumi H, Murai Y, Miyakawa M, Tokumasu S (2006) Marking in space and acquisition of environmental information by data-carrier for the visually impaired. In: 2006 World automation congress. IEEE, pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/WAC.2006.375929
Dastider A, Basak B, Safayatullah M, Shahnaz C, Fattah SA (2017) Cost efficient autonomous navigation system (e-cane) for visually impaired human beings. In: 2017 IEEE region 10 humanitarian technology conference (R10-HTC). IEEE, pp 650–653. https://doi.org/10.1109/R10-HTC.2017.8289043
Tang J et al (2021) Design and optimization of an assistive cane with visual odometry for blind people to detect obstacles with hollow section. IEEE Sens J 21(21):24759–24770. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2021.3115854
Cardillo E et al (2018) An electromagnetic sensor prototype to assist visually impaired and blind people in autonomous walking. IEEE Sens J 18(6):2568–2576. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2018.2795046
Kaushik C, Kumar S, Gandhi S, Gandhi N, Rajput NK (2018) Automated public bus identification system for visually impaired. In: 2018 International conference on advances in computing, communications and informatics (ICACCI). IEEE, pp 1761–1767. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICACCI.2018.8554616
Sykes J-D, Fleur RS, Norkulov D, Dong Z, Amineh RK (2019) Conscious GPS: a system to aid the visually impaired to navigate public transportation. In: 2019 IEEE 40th Sarnoff symposium. IEEE, pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/Sarnoff47838.2019.9067826
Noor MZH, Ismail I, Saaid MF (2009) Bus detection device for the blind using RFID application. In: 2009 5th International colloquium on signal processing & its applications. IEEE, pp 247–249. https://doi.org/10.1109/CSPA.2009.5069226
Al Kalbani J, Suwailam RB, Al Yafai A, Al Abri D, Awadalla M (2015) Bus detection system for blind people using RFID. In: 2015 IEEE 8th GCC conference & exhibition. IEEE, pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEEGCC.2015.7060038
Acknowledgements
We express our sincere gratitude to the visually impaired participants in this study, and orientation and mobility (O&M) experts and authorities at The Poona Blind Men’s Association, Pune. The authors thank the La Fondation Dassault Systemes for sponsoring and technical support, and Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune, for providing support to carry out this research work.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bhatlawande, S., Agrawal, H., Jagdale, A., Agrawal, A., Shilaskar, S. (2023). Electronic Travel Aid for Bus Detection and Bus-Route Number Recognition for Blind People. In: Chakraborty, B., Biswas, A., Chakrabarti, A. (eds) Advances in Data Science and Computing Technologies. ADSC 2022. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 1056. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3656-4_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3656-4_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-99-3655-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-99-3656-4
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)