SceneRecog: A Deep Learning Scene Recognition Model for Assisting Blind and Visually Impaired Navigate using Smartphones

Deep learning models have recently gained popularity in the research community due to their high classification success rates. In this paper, we proposed an EfficientNet-Lite based scene recognition model for scene recognition as a part of the smartphone-based navigation support application for the blind and visually impaired. We created a custom dataset with both indoor and outdoor scenes for training and testing of the model. The main objective of this work is to support people with visual impairments navigate by providing information about the scene via a smartphone application. The results from the experiment show encouraging performance from the proposed model. As a proof of concept, a prototype app was developed on the Android platform. However, the model can be implemented and deployed in any modern smartphone with good processing power.