Universal real-time navigational assistance (URNA): an urban bluetooth beacon for the blind

ABSTRACT

We describe a complete hardware/software system, dubbed Universal Real-Time Navigational Assistance (URNA), which enables communication of relevant location-aware information to a blind person carrying a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. Although URNA can be used for a number of different applications (e.g., an information kiosk at a shopping mall or public transit information at a bus stop), we concentrate on the challenging case of an urban intersection. Information provided to the user as he or she approaches the intersection includes a description of the intersection topology and real-time notification of the state of the traffic lights. The main FPGA-based control board (NavCon) interfaces with a traffic controller and with the Bluetooth modules, which are each mounted atop the intersection's pedestrian heads (pedheads) - the lights signaling a pedestrian when to "WALK" or "DON'T WALK". The cell phone software (PedNav), written in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), uses Text-To-Speech (TTS) for presenting the information transmitted by NavCon to the blind user.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.m MISCELLANEOUS

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
assistive technology, bluetooth, cell-phoned