Prototype of a Method to Support the Walking of Visually Impaired by Detecting the Walkable Area Using Pedestrians

The goal of this study is to support the walking of visually impaired people using AI and a small camera. It is difficult for the visually impaired to walk straight toward the target due to the characteristics of the disability. Even if they think they are walking straight, they will move off to the left and right. For this reason, they may have an accident such as falling from the platform of the train. In this report, in order to enable visually impaired people to walk safely toward the target, a small camera attached to the body captures the direction of travel, detects the area where the pedestrian can walk safely from the recorded pedestrian, and guide users there. We consider that the place where there are pedestrians is an area where we can walk safely. Pedestrians are detected from camera images using AI. Use sound to inform the user of the direction of travel. We prototyped these methods.