A RFID approach to help frail users in indoor orientation task

Abstract

People with visual disabilities still may have needs to recognize specific locations while exploring unfamiliar environments. Moreover, they are often challenged by places not designed for their special conditions creating navigation challenges in reaching specific destinations. Despite many solutions have been proposed to address orientation in indoor and outdoor environments, a number of limitations can limit their use and user acceptability, such as complexity, wearable-less and costs. In this paper an orientation system based on RFID technology is proposed, which may provide help to visually impaired in performing environment exploration and finding specific locations. The idea is to create a wearable device, non-invasive and ease-to-use, which is able to provide in real-time useful information to end users through electronic way-points about services or routings along their own path. The system uses transparent RFID tags positioned in the environment and an embedded system including a RFID reader as well as an audio module to convey audio message to end users. Performances of the system have been assessed through several investigations aimed to optimize the system layout, as well as the working conditions of the proposed solution.