Obstacle detection and warning system for visually impaired people based on electrode matrix and mobile Kinect

Obstacle detection and warning can improve the mobility as well as the safety of visually impaired people specially in unfamiliar environments. For this, firstly, obstacles are detected and localized and then the information of the obstacles will be sent to the visually impaired people by using different modalities such as voice, tactile, vibration. In this paper, we present an assistive system for visually impaired people based on the matrix of electrode and a mobile Kinect. This system consists of two main components: environment information acquisition and analysis and information representation. The first component aims at capturing the environment by using a mobile Kinect and analyzing it in order to detect the predefined obstacles for visually impaired people, while the second component tries to represent obstacle’s information under the form of electrode matrix.