Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Visible Light Communications-Based Smart Backpack for Visually Impaired Persons’ Assistance

Blindness and severe visual impairment significantly affect quality of life in many aspects. Nevertheless, in order to ease daily activities, facilitate social integration and improve visually impaired persons’ quality of life, state-of-the art sensors and wireless communication technologies can be used. In this context, this paper proposes a new concept for visually impaired persons’ assistance. The proposed prototype aims to provide indoor Visible Light Communications (VLC) based assistance, obstacle detection and on-demand personal support. To improve functionality and to increase user self-esteem, the concept is discreetly integrated in a smart backpack that has additional functional features. In order to support this concept, the information concerning the user’s surroundings is provided by the indoor lighting system through VLC, where the data contained in the visible light is delivered to the user after the conversion of the VLC information into sounds and haptics. The preliminary experimental evaluation of the concept confirms its ability to adequately accomplish the envisioned functions related to VLC connectivity and assistance in traveling through unfamiliar places.