eLabrador: A Wearable Navigation System for Visually Impaired Individuals

doi:10.1109/TASE.2025.3541055

	eLabrador: A Wearable Navigation System for Visually Impaired Individuals
	Kan, Meina 1,2; Zhang, Lixuan 1,2; Liang, Hao 1,2; Zhang, Boyuan 1,2; Fang, Minxue 1,2; Liu, Dongyang 1,2; Shan, Shiguang 1,3; Chen, Xilin 1,2
	2025
发表期刊	IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
ISSN	1545-5955
卷号	22 页码:12228-12244
摘要	Visually impaired individuals encounter significant challenges when walking and acting in unfamiliar environments, particularly in outdoor scenarios. The complexity of outdoor environments, characterized by diverse obstacles, traffic signals, and societal norms, poses substantial barriers to mobility of visually impaired individuals and makes long-distance walking especially arduous. Although GPS-based navigation systems can facilitate long-distance travel, they often suffer from location inaccuracies in urban areas and even completely fail indoors. Moreover, these systems lack the capability to provide detailed information about walkways and immediate surroundings, which are crucial for safe and efficient walking. To address these limitations, we introduce a proof-of-concept wearable navigation system named eLabrador, designed to assist visually impaired individuals in long-distance walking in unfamiliar outdoor environments. The eLabrador integrates public maps (e.g. Amap or Google Maps) and GPS for global route planning, while leveraging computational visual perception to provide precise and safe local guidance. This hybrid approach enables accurate and safe navigation for visually impaired individuals in outdoor scenarios. Specifically, the eLabrador utilizes a head-mounted RGB-D camera to capture environmental geometric terrain and objects in outdoor urban environments. These inputs are processed into a 3D semantic map, offering a detailed representation of the surrounding environment. The planning module then integrates this 3D semantic map with route information from the global map (i.e. Amap) to generate an optimized walking path. Finally, the interaction module utilizes the audio-haptic dual-channel to relay navigation instructions to visually impaired user. Together, these three modules work seamlessly to facilitate long-distance navigation for visually impaired individuals in outdoor environments. The eLabrador is evaluated with two real-world outdoor scenarios, involving 10 visually impaired and visually masked participants. The experiments show that eLabrador successfully guides visually impaired participants to their destinations in outdoor environments. Additionally, the eLabrador provides descriptive information about landmarks and other navigation cues, helping visually impaired users better understand their surroundings. Subjective evaluations further indicate that most participants felt a sense of safety and reported an acceptable cognitive load during navigation, indicating its usability and effectiveness.
关键词	Navigation Robots Legged locomotion Cameras Robot vision systems Semantics Automation Global Positioning System Urban areas Roads Wearable navigation system navigation for visually impaired outdoor navigation eLabrador
DOI	10.1109/TASE.2025.3541055
收录类别	SCI
语种	英语
资助项目	National Science and Technology Major Project[2021ZD0111901] ; Natural Science Foundation of China[U2336213] ; Natural Science Foundation of China[62122074]
WOS研究方向	Automation & Control Systems
WOS类目	Automation & Control Systems
WOS记录号	WOS:001469232100032
出版者	IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
引用统计
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.204/handle/2XEOYT63/40619
专题	中国科学院计算技术研究所期刊论文_英文
通讯作者	Chen, Xilin
作者单位	1.Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Comp Technol, State Key Lab AI Safety, Beijing 100190, Peoples R China 2.Univ Chinese Acad Sci, Beijing 100049, Peoples R China 3.Peng Cheng Natl Lab, Shenzhen 518055, Peoples R China
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Kan, Meina,Zhang, Lixuan,Liang, Hao,et al. eLabrador: A Wearable Navigation System for Visually Impaired Individuals[J]. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING,2025,22:12228-12244.
APA	Kan, Meina.,Zhang, Lixuan.,Liang, Hao.,Zhang, Boyuan.,Fang, Minxue.,...&Chen, Xilin.(2025).eLabrador: A Wearable Navigation System for Visually Impaired Individuals.IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING,22,12228-12244.
MLA	Kan, Meina,et al."eLabrador: A Wearable Navigation System for Visually Impaired Individuals".IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING 22(2025):12228-12244.