Indoor navigational aid using active RFID and QR-code for sighted and blind people

The aim of this paper is to describe a new Navigation technique to assist the blind and people with low vision to reach their destinations in an indoor environment. The proposed technique is based on our previous positioning technique using active Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. A Global Positioning System (GPS) does not work efficiently in indoor environments. This research produced a navigation service for sighted and blind people to assist them to reach their destination of interest via the shortest path. Tags were distributed at known locations and the mobile reader was carried by a user. The system role is to determine the shortest path to the destination which was indicated by a user. When the shortest path is calculated, the system indicates way points in the path which were represented by active tags in this scenario. Then the users are navigated to these points one by one via QR-Code till they reach their destinations. It was implemented in an indoor environment as a simulation system to navigate the user to particular offices with a successful shortest path identification rate and satisfactory navigation results were achieved.