Ground plane detection for wearable assistive devices for the visually impaired

Assistive devices developed for visually impaired users help them understand the environment so they can navigate with minimum additional help. Such devices greatly rely on image processing techniques to distinguish essential features from the input images. The ground surface represents one key element that needs to be detected. The user can move freely on the ground surface but also obstacles are usually located on this surface. As assistive devices need to provide information in real time, any designed algorithm must achieve real time results. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm to detect the ground plane in video sequences. The sequences are acquired by a stereo camera worn by a visually impaired user. Our algorithm uses a V-disparity map approach and it is tailored for the challenges that arise from the fact that the stereo camera has six degrees-of-freedom. We evaluate the accuracy of our algorithm using multiple real life scenarios. An evaluation of the performances of the algorithm was also performed to prove its accuracy and speed. We also discuss a possible speed up of the proposed algorithm but at a minor cost of accuracy.