Development of the visually impaired person guidance system using GPS

Most of the visually impaired are able to walk independently, if they have the mental map of their walking area. However, in their unknown area, they cannot walk alone and they need a guide dog or help of others for walking. And not only a supporter of the visually impaired but a visually impaired person receives stress while walking. More over in Japan, there are about 300,000 visually impaired persons, and are about 900 guide dogs. These number of guide dogs are too few. Therefore, an auto navigation system for the visually impaired is required in Japan. Our objective is the development of the auto navigation system for the visually impaired. This navigation system obtains the position of an user (visually impaired user) by DGPS. From the digital map data base in our system and the position of an use are analyzed, and suitable route to the destination is calculated, and then our system guides the way to the destination to the user. In this paper, we'd like to report about our new navigation system for the visually impaired and report some experimental results of our system. From these results, we think our system will be a powerful for the visually impaired.