Roberto Manduchi, a professor of computer science and engineering at UC Santa Cruz, and his team have recently published a paper presenting two smartphone-based applications that enable blind people to navigate inside buildings more safely, based on work from a 2015 CITRIS Seed Award.
The apps will allow users to determine their location and orientation inside a building, navigate to a specific point, and trace back a past route for safe return. Minimal audio cues provide direction signals to users, freeing their hands and allowing them to focus on safety as opposed to a handheld device.
Previous navigation tools have used sensors installed in buildings or GPS to assist users, but these methods suffer from location specificity and distorted indoor satellite signal, respectively. Manduchi’s lab takes advantage of the smartphone’s internal sensors and built-in accessibility features to create a scalable technology that sources from the user, rather than relying on prebuilt infrastructure that is not always guaranteed.
“I’m very grateful to the blind community in Santa Cruz, who gave me fantastic advice. [As engineers creating technology for the blind community], you have to be very, very careful and very humble, and start from the person who will use the technology, rather than from the technology itself,” Manduchi said.