NICT, Fujitsu develop indoor guidance tech for blind, using smartphones

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Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Fujitsu on Tuesday announced their joint development of an indoor support system for the blind that uses ultra wide band (UWB) technology and a smartphone. The system is able to provide real-time positioning data, even indoors where GPS cannot be used, and provide audio instructions on the distance and direction to a destination to help guide the blind.

This guidance support system for the blind reduces inconveniences facing the blind and is expected to pave the way to major R&D advances in other guidance support systems. The system will be demonstrated at Wireless Technology Park 2012 on Thursday and Friday at Pacifico Yokohama.

Currently there are systems under development that use GPS with mobile terminals to provide audio instructions to an outdoor destination. GPS, however, cannot be used indoors. Accordingly, NICT and Fujitsu decided to use a UWB positioning system, which can provide highly precise positioning indoors, in real time with a granularity of less than several tens of centimeters.

The newly developed support system for the blind takes advantage of the ability of impulse radio UWB (IR-UWB) technology to measure distances. It is configured with several base stations positioned in an indoor area as part of the infrastructure, several mobile stations – one for the user and others for destinations – and a PC that controls the entire system.

The base stations first measure the distance between each of the mobile stations (for the user and the destinations) and the base stations with a margin of ranging error of less than 30 centimeters, and the control PC calculates and gives the positioning data based on the ranging results in real time. The obtained position data is then sent to the user’s mobile station. Furthermore, the position data is sent via Bluetooth to a smartphone, where the user’s location and the location of the destination are simultaneously displayed using a special mapping application. The user is guided to the destination by audio instructions on direction and distance. As the user moves, the location information, map display, and audio instructions are updated.