An automated AR-based annotation tool for indoor navigation for visually impaired people

Low vision people face many daily encumbrances. Traditional visual enhancements do not suffice to navigate indoor environments, or recognize objects efficiently. In this paper, we explore how Augmented Reality (AR) can be leveraged to design mobile applications to improve visual experience and unburden low vision persons. Specifically, we propose a novel automated AR-based annotation tool for detecting and labeling salient objects for assisted indoor navigation applications like NearbyExplorer. NearbyExplorer, which issues audio descriptions of nearby objects to the users, relies on a database populated by large teams of volunteers and map-a-thons to manually annotate salient objects in the environment like desks, chairs, low overhead ceilings. This has limited widespread and rapid deployment. Our tool builds on advances in automated object detection, AR labeling and accurate indoor positioning to provide an automated way to upload object labels and user position to a database, requiring just one volunteer. Moreover, it enables low vision people to detect and notice surrounding objects quickly using smartphones in various indoor environments.