GPS System to Raise the Confidence in the Ability to Travel

GPS systems has been used for several years by blinds and visually impaired people to raise their confidence in the ability to travel. Some coin it as “one of the most significant changes to a blind person’s mobility“. GPS complements existing aids. It could never replace a guide dog or white cane. Indeed, GPS can’t help getting around construction or the two-by-four sticking off the back of a truck. However, it fills in the blanks for a blind traveler on what they can find in an unfamiliar town. An example is Humanware’s Trekker. Input is done with an integrated tactile keyboard. Directions are given by a synthetic voice. Audio output was a design challenge, because blind people use their hearing to pick up subtle environmental sounds, and they also use high frequencies to detect surfaces (echolocation). A video of the Trekker is available here.

Update: Technology review has an article on Georgia Tech’s System for Wearable Audio Navigation (SWAN). (via Anthony Townsend)

Relation to my thesis: It seems that a navigation system, more than delivering directions, provide confidence to their users (not exclusively blind people) in unfamiliar environments. Humans use “echolocation” to detect their environment.