New generation of navigation assistance
Rationale
Visually impaired people (285Mil worldwide, esp. elderly) are still a very heterogeneous user group, with a variety of needs and expectations on assistance devices to support their daily lives. As an example, user studies indicate that many visually impaired users appreciate navigation assistance devices that do not attract the attention of other people. A haptic belt or other wearables, giving haptic navigation signals to a user are highly promising solution to satisfy this user expectation.
Solution
To make the development of navigation assistant devices for visually impaired people sustainable and profitable, it is necessary to benefit from the developments on the mass-markets for smartphone navigation and location-based services. To achieve this, FIONA creates an ecosystem for navigation assistance solutions, that allows to easily share and re-use software components. Within the FIONA eco-system, software components, e.g., for localisation, navigation, or obstacle detection, can be easily used in different products, such as smartphone navigation or haptic navigation for visually impaired.
Benefits
FIONA greatly supports a new generation of navigation assistance products that are tailored to individual needs of various user-groups, increasing the opportunities of millions of people around the world.