2SEES project (2015 to ...):
The 2SEES (Smart Environment Explorer Stick 2) project is a research / development project that was launched in 2015 by SMIR team of LIMOS. It is the continuation of the SEES project (Yusro et al. 2013) that had for objective to study and developed an fault tolerant and easy-to-use an electronic travel aid (ETA) for visually impaired people (VIP).
VIP are 253 million in the world. Most of them have problems with mobility (walking safely, orientation and navigation).
To help VIP two types of assistive methods exists:
- Traditional ones: white cane, guide dogs
- Electronic Travel Aids (ETA)
Electronic travel aids can be classified in two main categories:
- Obstacle detection (enhancing the white cane)
- Navigation, orientation, guidance
Due to many lacs (single functionality, performances in differents situations, fault tolerance, ...) the rate of adoption of ETAs is low.
SEES and 2SEES were introduced to try to solve these problems. Thanks to its many sensors, SEES combines both an obstacle detection system and a navigation system. It is also a context aware. The SEES is architecture is split in three parts: the cane, the smartphone, and the back-end (see img. 1)
The objective of 2SEES project is globaly the same. We have simply add fault-tolerance and dependability concepts.
A first prototype is currently tested in our lab (see img. 2)
