A
GIS-BASED TECHNOLOGICAL ASSIST FOR TRAVEL PLANS OF THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED
8050, Ikarashi-2,
Email: miyaji@gis.ie.niigata-u.ac.jp
Presenter
Yoshinobu
Maeda
Department of Biocybernetics,
Faculty of Engineering, Niigata University
8050, Ikarashi-2, Niigata, 950-2181, Japan
Email: maeda@bc.niigata-u.ac.jp
Various technologies have been developed for
assisting the ability of the visually impaired to travel, e.g., long canes, textured
paving blocks, infrared- and GPS-based speech output guidance systems, etc.
In particular, the guidance systems using the infrared beams and the GPS
can be defined as the electronic information technology based assistive
technologies (or e-AT). In the guidance system using an infrared beam,
such as the Talking Sign system of remote signage, the user obtains, locally,
the name of a location in a public space. On the other hand, the
GPS-based system [1]-[4] globally supplies the user with positional guidance,
based on numeric data from satellites. These e-ATs
are of help for the visually impaired in traveling to cities and towns.
However, in a survey on lifestyles of about 300,000 visually impaired
people, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in
the
gray region (a few days every month, or year, and staying at home) means that,
in fact, the visually impaired do not go out. The question arises as to
why do the visually impaired stay at home, or do not travel? What is
inadequate regarding such assistive technologies?
Table 1: A questionnaire of 300,000 visually
impaired people
(The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in
G rling [5] proposed a
behavioral process to illustrate the interrelation between information
acquisition and travel. G rling?fs
proposal comprises three sequential steps; firstly: an action plan; secondly:
formation of a travel plan (travel plan) and finally: execution of the travel
plan (travel performance). The action plan stimulates people to travel.
Secondly, the travel plan, rendering the action plan operational, is
needed to achieve the travel performance. The travel performance entails
not only direct observation of the environment but also maintenance of the traveler?fs orientation within it.
Integration of this travel performance results in a navigation that
involves the updating of the position and orientation, whilst traveling towards
the destination. If sequential transformation from the travel plan to the
travel performance is broken by some disability, it is difficult to achieve the
necessary navigation. Under these circumstances, infrared- and GPS-based !
speech
output guidance systems are helpful for the travel performance of the visually
impaired. However, if the transformation from an action plan into a
travel plan is broken, infrared- and GPS-based speech output guidance systems
are not so useful. In this case, the 40% visually impaired who are not
inclined to go out need other types of assistive technology to construct their
travel plans.
The main purpose of our research is to clarify a
technological possibility for assisting the travel plans of the visually
impaired. To this end, we have developed tentative software to assist
travel plans of the visually impaired before commencing their travel. In
particular, self-determination would play an important role in travel planning
when selecting an appropriate travel route between the starting point and the
destination. Therefore, we have applied an analytic hierarchy process
(AHP) technique, which is a mathematical model of human decision-making, to our
software as a self-determination assist for the visually impaired. It was
difficult, however, to select a couple of preset travel routes automatically.
We addressed this problem by applying a factor analysis of the road
sections in the geographical information system (GIS) database. Figure 1
shows a schematic flow of our development. In Figure 2, we illustrate our
software. Finally we show an example of the determination of a travel route in
figure 3.
Figure 1: Schematic flow of the development of
AHP-GIS-based decision-making software.
Figure 2: Images of our software displays in
selecting demands for the travel routes.
Figure 3: An example of the result.
Acknowledgement.
This research was partially supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science (JSPS), Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B), and Mitsubishi Foundation,
the 36th Grants for Social Welfare Activities.
References
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