Professor of School of Engineering, Design and Built Environment, Western Sydney University, Australia. His research interests cover Industry 4.0, Additive Manufacturing, Advanced Engineering Materials and Structures (Metals and Composites), Multi-scale Modelling of Materials and Structures, Metal Forming and Metal Surface Treatment.
2024-02-24
2024-01-04
2023-11-02
Abstract—This paper proposes a physical interaction based travel aid system for the visually impaired. The proposed system connects two steered wheels to the waist of the user through telescopic rods. These wheels are controlled to avoid obstacles or dents in the ground, detected via two sensing modules: a depth camera and a passive fork mechanism for the wheels. When steering control is applied, the resisting force on each wheel from the ground changes and the difference between the forces makes the user unconsciously change walking direction. In this paper, we describe the navigation system and confirm its possibility of safe guidance. Index Terms—Traveling aid system, Visual impairment, Physical interaction, Steered wheels, Depth camera Cite: Shinya Kajikawa, Iori Watanabe, and Hayato Hoshi, "Physical Interaction Based Traveling Aid System with Depth Camera and Unevenness Detection Mechanism," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 11, No. 10, pp. 767-776, October 2022. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.11.10.767-776 Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the article is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
