Visual and Infrared Sensor Data-Based Obstacle Detection for the Visually Impaired Using the Google Project Tango Tablet Development Kit and the Unity Engine

A novel visual and infrared sensor data-based system to assist visually impaired users in detecting obstacles in their path while independently navigating indoors is presented. The system has been developed for the recently introduced Google Project Tango Tablet Development Kit equipped with a powerful graphics processor and several sensors which allow it to track its motion and orientation in 3-D space in real-time. It exploits the inbuilt functionalities of the Unity engine in the Tango SDK to create a 3-D reconstruction of the surrounding environment, then associates a Unity collider component with the user and utilizes it to determine his interaction with the reconstructed mesh in order to detect obstacles. The user is warned about any detected obstacles via audio alerts. An extensive empirical evaluation of the obstacle detection component has yielded favorable results, thus, confirming the potential of this system for future development work.