Augmenting human spatial navigation via sensory substitution

Humans primarily use their sense of sight for spatial awareness and to navigate their surroundings, but usually lack the ability to employ their other senses as a guidance system. This paper details the implementation of a sensory substitution device (SSD) to make visionless navigation possible and describes an innovative method of training users to employ this device in an virtual reality (VR) environment. Applications for this method of sensory substitution range from situations where 360° awareness is important (such as riding a bike on a busy road), when a user is piloting a system remotely, to assisting individuals with visual impairment. Visually impaired individuals could be positively impacted by an affordable device which allows them to sense their surroundings in greater detail than other solutions available to them nowadays. The developed platform, called Visionless Interfacing Exploration Wearable (VIEW) substitutes the vision sense with a wearable hepatic feedback and has shown the ability to assist individuals with recognizing obstacles and avoiding walls when navigating a space. We tested the proposed VIEW system in two environments: a 2D game environment with a joystick controller and a 3D virtual reality environment developed using HTC Vive technology. Our six test participants completed several navigation scenarios in both environments with and without receiving the designed haptic feedback. All users were able to successfully navigate an unknown maze without vision using the developed wearable device as their primary method for navigation.