The Privateye Project

Background
The impact of the microchip has been greater on the life of the visually impaired than that of the sighted community. With computers and mobile phones made accessible with text-to-speech and voice command systems, people with visual impairments are now rapidly making their own way in professional careers. When it comes to getting from home to their places of work and other destinations, however, the advances have not kept pace. Informed and precise movement along hazardous pedestrian routes and bewildering indoor and outdoor passageways have presented significant technological challenges. The traditional travel aids for the visually impaired, guide dogs and white canes, cannot predict the location of a journey’s objective nor identify the signposts along the way. Unless moving through very familiar ground, the world beyond the reach of a white cane or the limited competence of a guide dog is terra incognita for the visually impaired. It is this void that SIRI and its partners intend to animate through their Privateye project.

Privateye is envisaged as a mobile-phone-based navigation system that would be considered an everyday feature of visually impaired individuals’ travel equipment, as essential to their needs as a guide dog or white cane.

Privateye 1.0 : Stage One
In 2007, SIRI decided to base its future distribution, training and developmental activities on a mobile phone platform. SIRI and its partners at OCAD, in conjunction with Nokia’s accessibility department and the ATRC at the University of Toronto (now IDRC at OCAD University), evaluated a number of off-the-shelf navigation systems with a team of students who were visually impaired and put together an accessible mobile phone-based navigation system called Privateye 1.0. The video featured below, produced by SIRI in 2009, demonstrates this system.

Privateye 1.0 Shortcomings
Current smart phones produced by corporations such as Nokia, Apple, Google, etc. have produced or are in the process of developing GPS navigation solutions accessible to the visually impaired including turn-by-turn instructions to both sighted and visually impaired pedestrians alike. They are excellent accessible mapping tools, but they are designed to guide sighted drivers and pedestrians to a visible target. The typical error of two to ten metres inherent in current GPS satellite coverage is unimportant to the sighted, but a critical void for the visually impaired.

In collaboration with the University of Toronto, SIRI explored the concerns and needs of visually impaired pedestrians who use some form of electronic navigation aids besides their cane and/or guide dog through two focus groups. Informed by the outcomes of this research study, SIRI and its partners are working on solutions to meet three critical shortcomings found in current GPS-based navigation devices in the areas of operator control, indoor mobility and accuracy. For a dynamic abstract of our findings, follow Daniella, her GPS device and guide dog Luke on a stroll in downtown Toronto (see video below).

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Privateye 2.0: Stage Two
Privateye 2.0 represents work in progress in which prototype and beta applications are expected within the next 12 to 24 months. It involves two major advances, addressing operator control and indoor mobility: (1) The OCAD headset eliminates current safety and mobility-based objections to conventional ear-canal blocking devices, offering hand’s free voice command mobility. (2) Tagin! is the IDRC’s answer to GPS’s inability to function in an indoor environment.

(1) The OCAD Headset
Whether handling a guide dog or manipulating a white cane, the additional task of pushing keys on one’s mobile phone and straining to hear GPS directions is a significant distraction for a visually impaired pedestrian. In extreme weather it could prove hazardous. To mitigate this problem, SIRI has undertaken the development of a specialized headset that would provide secure, hands-free, voice-activated GPS operation as well as eliminate ear canal blockage and reduce the number of individual battery charging stations.

Sixty industrial design students at the Ontario College of Art and Design worked on the design of the headset during their 2009 fall term. The headset will also carry a Bluetooth-enabled compass and GPS antenna. A camera and course-correcting vibrators are also being considered. The OCAD headset will be compatible with all Bluetooth enabled mobile phones. It will also bring other improvements such as proper fit, device security, battery performance and antenna positioning. Evaluation of the designs and production of prototypes will be undertaken during 2011.

(2) Indoor Mobility
GPS cannot function indoors or in shadowed environments. Dr. Jorge Silva and his colleagues at the IDRC at OCAD University, have developed prototype implementations of positioning that provide location services appropriate to indoor environments. These prototype implementations are tagin! and WIPS, which provide human readable labels and indoor coordinates, respectively, based on the distinct patterns of WiFi signals available in all locations with WiFi coverage.

Dr. Silva’s group is working on packaging the initial tagin! prototype into a single positioning engine providing a standard and open application programming interface (API) that facilitates local deployment of indoor location-based systems (LBS) in built environments and 3rd-party application development.

Privateye 3.0: Stage Three
The final stage of our joint development venture will involve the creation of a comprehensive advanced mobility system consolidating our hands-free, voice operated, outdoor to indoor mobility development with a highly accurate electronic map.

The noted gap of two to ten metres centred on the pedestrian that occurs with GPS devices designed for the sighted community, is a distance easily bridged by the sighted, but yet to be overcome with present techniques by the visually impaired. SIRI’s developmental priority is to fill this critical gap with the precise locations of such landmarks as street crossing curbs, traffic lights, bus shelters, letter boxes, building entrances, etc., as well as the paths leading to them. The precise location of these previously invisible objects and paths may now be entered onto such highly accurate maps as Google’s ‘Street View’. Replacing the GPS-linked pedestrian icon with re-calibrated geodetic coordinates will require the addition of video capacity to the OCAD headset and a serious API development, but the resulting product will be a great stride in providing independence for the visually impaired.