Multimodal Feedback to Support the Navigation of Visually Impaired People

Various assistance systems have been developed to overcome limitations of orientation and mobility of visually impaired people. A crucial aspect is to convey the generated information in a safe and intuitive way without disturbing or overstraining the remaining sensory perception. This paper presents the development and evaluation of a multimodal feedback for a navigation assistance system. The feedback modulation enables comprehensive navigation based on sensory environment detection and interpretation and can be adapted to the user's preferences. For this purpose, navigation instructions received by the path planning algorithm of the assistance system are converted into signals and transmitted to the user via auditory and vibrotactile interfaces. The generated feedback and the respective signal are evaluated in a subject study under constant conditions to test reliability. With few limitations, the functionality of the feedback approach can be proven.