Navigator application for blind navigation

Abstract

A person, who has partially or completely lost their capacity to see, has to face some big challenges during his life. Blind navigation is one of the major challenges for their day to day life activities. The sighted population can use vision to get safely across streets, through a grocery store, to and from school. Blind travelers are very effective using canes and using native sensory abilities, like auditory and kinesthetic skills for their navigations. Throughout the human life span, blindness, and particularly the inability to freely navigate, disrupts independence. This leads to decreased competence, economic dependence, depression, even failure of cognitive abilities to develop. Nowadays many people use hand held device with Android operating system. This research solution is an android navigator application to help blind people navigation. It will use GPS (Global Positioning System) and Google Maps technologies to identify locations around the user. User can specify the destination by address, and then our app will help him to reach his destination. Walking directions that are spoken by Google Maps help him to navigate in the physical world. User can listen to the audio instructions given by the application during the navigation and move to the destination and the application informs about any obstacle on the path of the user. Application is using the camera of the device and external sensors for obstacle detection.