Mobile Phone Based Indoor Navigation System for Blind and Visually Impaired People

The urban mobility for blind and visually impaired people is a challenging task. Using public transportation, subways or visiting complex buildings like shopping malls is virtually impossible without some kind of support. Beside the conventional helpers the advanced sensory and computational power of a recent smart phone make it ideal candidate as a navigation aid for blind people. To take the full advantage of this device a carefully designed and implemented software system is required where the special user needs, man-machine interfaces and state of the art indoor localization method needs to be combined. This paper introduces the architecture of an indoor navigation system specially designed for blind and visually impaired people, explains main components, interfaces and briefly presents important algorithms and methods.