Firebrick Team 2017
Indoor Navigation for the Visually Impaired
Indoor navigation relies heavily on visual cues, often requiring that low-vision individuals rely on the guidance of a sighted person. The Tufts 2017 senior design team Firebrick designed and built the foundations of a navigational system that will allow a low-vision individual to autonomously navigate indoors. Firebrick’s efforts focused on designing both an Arduino-powered system to find a user’s location and the beginnings of an iPhone app to interface that system with the user. The system incorporates a series of ultra wideband anchors strategically placed around a building to triangulate the position of a single ultra wideband tag carried by the user. The iPhone interface, inspired by multiple rounds of user testing, was designed specifically for a low-vision audience. Further work includes implementing the user interface, as well as using the tag’s location and a digital blueprint to calculate routes to a final destination.
Related Tech Notes
- Finding Location with Time of Arrival and Time Difference of Arrival Techniques by Brian O’Keefe
- Non-visual Human-Computer Interaction by Aaron Bowen
- How Bluetooth Works by Jeffrey Wu
Redbrick Team Project Poster
