Guiding Blind People with Haptic Feedback
Résumé
Maintaining orientation while traveling in complex or unknown environments isachallengingtaskfor visually impaired (VI) pedestrians. In this paper,we propose a novelapproach to assistblindpeopleduring navigation between waypoints(walkstraight)with tactors on their wrists. Our main goal isto decrease the cognitive load needed by blindpeopleto followinstructionsin overloaded environments.Two issues are discussed, 1) the number of vibration motorsused; 2) the type of vibration dimensionsissued. Preliminary results fromofan informal evaluation performedwith two blind usersshowedthat vibrations could help the usersmaintainingtheir straight path,howeverpatterns were sometimes confusing. This reinforced that walking an unknown path is a demanding and stressful task and the cognitive load should be reduced to a minimum.