Development of a Haptic Viewfinder Module for Locating Objects Using Vibrotactile Feedback

Visually impaired and blind people use several mobile phone applications that enable them to socially interact in social media platforms. However, photography is challenging for them since it requires focusing on a target object. To address this issue, we developed a haptic viewfinder to assist the user in locating an object within the image frame of a mobile phone application. The system is initialized through speech-to-text conversion to provide the system an input on what item the user wants to focus on. To guide the user, the device uses artificial intelligence and image processing to locate objects, and then provides a vibrotactile feedback to localize a target object's location. Moreover, we evaluated the effectivity of the vibration through Eulerian motion magnification.