Indoor Location Support System for Visually Impaired People Using Beacon Technology

• Enthoni A. F. Serafim IFES
• Luca da G. Wyatt IFES
• Julia S. Barreiros IFES
• Ana L. A. da S. do Nascimento IFES
• Richard J. M. G. Tello IFES

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/eries.2024.244703

Abstract

This article presents the development of a system to assist visually impaired individuals in navigating indoor environments. The system includes a beacon0, carried by the user, and additional beacons (beacon1, beacon2 and beacon3) placed in fixed locations. When the person approaches a beacon, the beacon0 emits a message through a speaker, providing location references. The prototype utilizes an ESP32 board, DFPlayer Mini MP3 module, 1W/8 Ohm speaker, and 32GB microSD. Tests were conducted in a 38.5-meter corridor, adjusting transmission power and monitoring the RSSI to ensure effective communication. The results confirmed the system’s robustness in data transmission and audio playback, highlighting its effectiveness in controlled environments.

References

Bie, J. v. d., Visser, B., Matsari, J., Singh, M., Hasselt, T. v., Koopman, J., and Kröse, B. (2016). Guiding the visually impaired through the environment with beacons. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct (UbiComp ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY.

Cheraghi, S. A., Namboodiri, V., and Walker, L. (2017). Guidebeacon: Beacon-based in-door wayfinding for the blind, visually impaired, and disoriented. In 2017 IEEE Inter national Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom), pages 121–130.

Fard, H. K., Chen, Y., and Son, K. K. (2015). Indoor positioning of mobile devices with agile ibeacon deployment. In 2015 IEEE 28th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE), pages 275–279.

Guerreiro, J. a., Ahmetovic, D., Sato, D., Kitani, K., and Asakawa, C. (2019). Airport accessibility and navigation assistance for people with visual impairments. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI ’19, page 1–14, New York, NY, USA. Association for Computing Machinery.

Huang, C.-Y., Wu, C.-K., and Liu, P.-Y. (2022). Assistive technology in smart cities: A case of street crossing for the visually-impaired. Technology in Society, 68:101805.

Korial, A. E. and Abdullah, M. N. (2016). Novel method using beacon and smart phone for visually impaired/blind people. International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887), 137(1).

Lin, M. Y.-C., Nguyen, T. T., Cheng, E. Y.-L., Le, A. N. H., and Cheng, J. M. S. (2022). Proximity marketing and bluetooth beacon technology: A dynamic mechanism leading to relationship program receptiveness. Journal of Business Research, 141:151–162.

Mai, C., Chen, H., Zeng, L., Li, Z., Liu, G., Qiao, Z., Qu, Y., Li, L., and Li, L. (2024). A smart cane based on 2d lidar and rgb-d camera sensor-realizing navigation and obstacle recognition. Sensors, 24(3).

Retnowati, Y. and Budi, A. H. S. (2018). Smart cane using espectro with gps tracking system. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 384(1):012054.

Ruffa, A. J., Zonfrelli, T. A., Stevens, A. M., and Woodward, N. K. (2015). Assessing ibeacons as an assistive tool for blind people in denmark. worcester polytechnic institute. Technical report, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

WHO, W. H. O. (2019). World report on vision. Technical Report Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, Geneva.

WHO, W. H. O. and UNICEF, U. N. C. F. (2022). Global report on assistive technology. Technical Report Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO., Geneva.

Zafari, F., Gkelias, A., and Leung, K. K. (2019). A survey of indoor localization systems and technologies. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 21(3):2568–2599.