Development of the navigation system for the visually impaired

The objective of this study is the development of an auto-navigation system which support activities of the visually impaired without help of others. This system navigates the visually impaired by using information about three sensors (a gyroscope, a terrestrial magnetism sensor and an acceleration sensor), DGPS, and digital maps. In this paper, we report the outline of the system and assess the developed method. From the experiments, the following characteristics become clear. (1) Using our method, under any condition the position of a user can be estimated accurately. (2) The system can calculate the suitable route and navigate a subject correctly.