ABSTRACT
Navigation assistive technologies aim to improve the mobility of blind or visually impaired people. In particular, turn-by-turn navigation assistants provide sequential instructions to enable autonomous guidance towards a destination. A problem frequently addressed in the literature is to obtain accurate position and orientation of the user during such guidance. An orthogonal challenge, often overlooked in the literature, is how precisely navigation instructions are followed by users. In particular, imprecisions in following rotation instructions lead to rotation errors that can significantly affect navigation. Indeed, a relatively small error during a turn is amplified by the following frontal movement and can lead the user towards incorrect or dangerous paths. In this contribution, we study rotation errors and their effect on turn-by-turn guidance for individuals with visual impairments. We analyze a dataset of indoor trajectories of 11 blind participants guided along three routes through a multi-story shopping mall using NavCog, a turn-by-turn smartphone navigation assistant. We find that participants extend rotations by 17º on average. The error is not proportional to the expected rotation; instead, it is accentuated for "slight turns" (22.5º-60º), while "ample turns" (60º-120º) are consistently approximated to 90º. We generalize our findings as design considerations for engineering navigation assistance in real-world scenarios.
- Ali Abdolrahmani, William Easley, Michele Williams, Stacy Branham, and Amy Hurst. 2017. Embracing Errors: Examining How Context of Use Impacts Blind Individuals' Acceptance of Navigation Aid Errors. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dragan Ahmetovic, Cristian Bernareggi, Andrea Gerino, and Sergio Mascetti. 2014. Zebrarecognizer: Efficient and precise localization of pedestrian crossings. In Pattern Recognition (ICPR), 2014 22nd International Conference on. IEEE. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dragan Ahmetovic, Roberto Manduchi, James M Coughlan, and Sergio Mascetti. 2017. Mind your crossings: Mining GIS imagery for crosswalk localization. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS) (2017). Google ScholarDigital Library
- ER Chrastil and WH Warren. 2017. Rotational error in path integration: encoding and execution errors in angle reproduction. Experimental brain research (2017).Google Scholar
- James M Coughlan and Alan L Yuille. 1999. Manhattan world: Compass direction from a single image by bayesian inference. In International Conference on Computer Vision. IEEE. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Elliot P Fenech, Frank A Drews, and Jonathan Z Bakdash. 2010. The effects of acoustic turn-by-turn navigation on wayfinding. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. SAGE Publications.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Madeleine Fortin, Patrice Voss, Catherine Lord, Maryse Lassonde, Jens Pruessner, Dave Saint-Amour, Constant Rainville, and Franco Lepore. 2008. Wayfinding in the blind: larger hippocampal volume and supranormal spatial navigation. Brain (2008).Google Scholar
- Cole Gleason, Dragan Ahmetovic, Saiph Savage, Carlos Toxtli, Carl Posthuma, Chieko Asakawa, Kris M. Kitani, and Jeffrey P. Bigham. 2018. Crowdsourcing the Installation and Maintenance of Indoor Localization Infrastructure to Support Blind Navigation. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT) (2018). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Reginald G Golledge, Roberta L Klatzky, and Jack M Loomis. 1996. Cognitive mapping and wayfinding by adults without vision. In The construction of cognitive maps. Springer.Google Scholar
- David Guth and Robert LaDuke. 1994. The veering tendency of blind pedestrians: An analysis of the problem and literature review. Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness (1994).Google Scholar
- I Israël, D Sievering, and E Koenig. 1995. Self-rotation estimate about the vertical axis. Acta oto-laryngologica (1995).Google Scholar
- Hernisa Kacorri, Sergio Mascetti, Andrea Gerino, Dragan Ahmetovic, Hironobu Takagi, and Chieko Asakawa. 2016. Supporting Orientation of People with Visual Impairment: Analysis of Large Scale Usage Data. In International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chelhwon Kim and Roberto Manduchi. 2014. Planar structures from line correspondences in a manhattan world. In Asian Conference on Computer Vision. Springer.Google Scholar
- Jee-Eun Kim, Masahiro Bessho, Shinsuke Kobayashi, Noboru Koshizuka, and Ken Sakamura. 2016. Navigating visually impaired travelers in a large train station using smartphone and bluetooth low energy. In Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Robert M Kitchin. 1994. Cognitive maps: What are they and why study them? Journal of environmental psychology (1994).Google Scholar
- Roberto Manduchi and Sri Kurniawan. 2011. Mobility-related accidents experienced by people with visual impairment. AER Journal: Research and Practice in Visual Impairment and Blindness (2011).Google Scholar
- VV Marlinsky. 1999. Vestibular and vestibulo-proprioceptive perception of motion in the horizontal plane in blindfolded man-II. Estimations of rotations about the earth-vertical axis. Neuroscience (1999).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Sergio Mascetti, Dragan Ahmetovic, Andrea Gerino, Cristian Bernareggi, Mario Busso, and Alessandro Rizzi. 2016a. Robust traffic lights detection on mobile devices for pedestrians with visual impairment. Computer Vision and Image Understanding (2016). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sergio Mascetti, Lorenzo Picinali, Andrea Gerino, Dragan Ahmetovic, and Cristian Bernareggi. 2016b. Sonification of guidance data during road crossing for people with visual impairments or blindness. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (2016). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Masayuki Murata, Dragan Ahmetovic, Daisuke Sato, Hironobu Takagi, Kris M. Kitani, and Chieko Asakawa. 2018. Smartphone-based Indoor Localization for Blind Navigation across Building Complexes. In IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom).Google ScholarCross Ref
- Madoka Nakajima and Shinichiro Haruyama. 2012. Indoor navigation system for visually impaired people using visible light communication and compensated geomagnetic sensing. In Communications in China. IEEE.Google Scholar
- Uran Oh, Shaun K Kane, and Leah Findlater. 2013. Follow that sound: using sonification and corrective verbal feedback to teach touchscreen gestures. In Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Marko Perivsa, Ivan Cvitić, and Rosana Elizabeta Sente. 2017. Comparative Analysis of Mobile Phone Application Solutions Accessibility for informing Visually Impaired Persons in Traffic Environment. In Services for mobility and mobility as a service.Google Scholar
- Jyri Rajamaki, Petri Viinikainen, Julius Tuomisto, Thomas Sederholm, and Miika S"a"am"anen. 2007. LaureaPOP indoor navigation service for the visually impaired in a WLAN environment. In Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Electronics, Hardware, Wireless and Optical Communications. World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society (WSEAS). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Edward K Sadalla and Daniel R Montello. 1989. Remembering changes in direction. Environment and Behavior (1989).Google Scholar
- Daisuke Sato, Uran Oh, Kakuya Naito, Hironobu Takagi, Kris Kitani, and Chieko Asakawa. 2017. NavCog3: An Evaluation of a Smartphone-Based Blind Indoor Navigation Assistant with Semantic Features in a Large-Scale Environment. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computers and Accessibility. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Barry M Seemungal, Stefan Glasauer, Michael A Gresty, and Adolfo M Bronstein. 2007. Vestibular perception and navigation in the congenitally blind. Journal of neurophysiology (2007).Google Scholar
- Kristen Shinohara and Jacob O Wobbrock. 2011. In the shadow of misperception: assistive technology use and social interactions. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Simon Ungar. 2000. Cognitive mapping without visual experience. Cognitive mapping: past, present, and future (2000).Google Scholar
- William R Wiener, Richard L Welsh, and Bruce B Blasch. 2010. Foundations of orientation and mobility. American Foundation for the Blind.Google Scholar
- Michele A Williams, Amy Hurst, and Shaun K Kane. 2013. Pray before you step out: describing personal and situational blind navigation behaviors. In Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. ACM. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lucy Yardley and Marsha Higgins. 1998. Spatial updating during rotation: The role of vestibular information and mental activity. Journal of Vestibular Research (1998).Google Scholar
- GL Zacharias and LR Young. 1981. Influence of combined visual and vestibular cues on human perception and control of horizontal rotation. Experimental brain research (1981).Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Turn Right: Analysis of Rotation Errors in Turn-by-Turn Navigation for Individuals with Visual Impairments
Recommendations
Airport Accessibility and Navigation Assistance for People with Visual Impairments
CHI '19: Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsPeople with visual impairments often have to rely on the assistance of sighted guides in airports, which prevents them from having an independent travel experience. In order to learn about their perspectives on current airport accessibility, we ...
Impact of Expertise on Interaction Preferences for Navigation Assistance of Visually Impaired Individuals
W4A '19: Proceedings of the 16th International Web for All ConferenceNavigation assistive technologies have been designed to support individuals with visual impairments during independent mobility by providing sensory augmentation and contextual awareness of their surroundings. Such information is habitually provided ...
WatchOut: Obstacle Sonification for People with Visual Impairment or Blindness
ASSETS '19: Proceedings of the 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and AccessibilityIndependent mobility is one of the main challenges for blind or visually impaired (BVI) people. In particular, BVI people often need to identify and avoid nearby obstacles, for example a bicycle parked on the sidewalk. This is generally achieved with a ...
Comments