NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR THE BLIND - AUDITORY DISPLAY MODES AND GUIDANCE

The research we are reporting here is part of our effort to develop a navigation system for the blind. Our long-term goal is to create a por table, self-contained system that will allow visually impaired individ uals to travel through familiar and unfamiliar environments without th e assistance of guides. The system, as it exists now, consists of the following functional components: (1) a module for determining the trav eler's position and orientation in space, (2) a Geographic Information System comprising a detailed database of our test site and software f or route planning and for obtaining information from the database, and (3) the user interface. The experiment reported here is concerned wit h one function of the navigation system: guiding the traveler along a predefined route. We evaluate guidance performance as a function of fo ur different display modes: one involving spatialized sound from a vir tual acoustic display, and three involving verbal commands issued by a synthetic speech display. The virtual display mode fared best in term s of both guidance performance and user preferences.