Capstone project helps people who are blind navigate city intersections

Crossing a busy city inter­sec­tion can be a pre­car­ious task for any pedes­trian, a maze fraught with var­ious obsta­cles like cars, cyclists, trains, con­struc­tion, and other people on foot. Now imagine nav­i­gating with little to no sight.

In an effort to make crossing the street sim­pler and safer for people who are blind or visu­ally impaired, seven recent North­eastern grad­u­ates cre­ated a smart­phone assisted nav­i­ga­tion app called Help Me Get There.

The app won second prize in the Depart­ment of Elec­trical and Com­puter Engineering’s Cap­stone Design Com­pe­ti­tion. The stu­dent team com­prised Alexander Greene, Chad Hof­fart, Mike Don­nelly, Nicholas Ivory, Noah Gold­stein, Nick Spath, and Thomas Judd, all E’15. Waleed Meleis, an asso­ciate pro­fessor in the Depart­ment of Elec­trical and Com­puter Engi­neering, advised the group.

“In speaking with end users, they said they simply need more infor­ma­tion to feel more com­fort­able crossing inter­sec­tions,” Greene said.

There are sev­eral com­po­nents to the cap­stone team’s system. One is having mats embedded with RFID tags installed at inter­sec­tions. A RFID sensor would be placed in a har­ness worn by the person’s seeing-​​eye dog. When the dog gets to within one meter of the mat, Blue­tooth tech­nology would prompt the app to recall all the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion about the inter­sec­tion. Three options would then be avail­able for the user: the name of the inter­sec­tion, infor­ma­tion about the inter­sec­tion, and align­ment with the cross­walk so they walk within the lines.

Using broad finger swipes to the left, right, or down, users would cycle through the options on their smart­phones and get an audible response each time, Greene explained. “It’s all very intu­itive, very for­giving, and allows wide-​​based swipes,” he said. “Users don’t have to learn any­thing new in order to use the app. The state of the app is always apparent to the user.”

While the RFID sensor is embedded in the dog’s har­ness in the stu­dents’ cap­stone project pro­to­type, the stu­dents envi­sion future ver­sions in which the sensor would be placed in the user’s cane.

The stu­dents noted that indi­vid­uals who are blind cur­rently rely on apps such as Google Maps to help them nav­i­gate from point A to point B. But those, they said, don’t take into account pos­sible haz­ards and can be inac­cu­rate at times.

Even seeing-​​eye dogs have their lim­i­ta­tions, Greene explained, as they have trouble seeing cars that are far away and are trained to walk directly to traffic islands in the middle of an inter­sec­tion, which may catch users by surprise.

The stu­dents’ inspi­ra­tion to create the app grew out of a meeting on campus with indi­vid­uals at the National Braille Press. “We wanted to find end users who need a viable product to help them,” Don­nelly said.

In order to build a data­base of infor­ma­tion for the app, the stu­dents vis­ited 16 inter­sec­tions near Northeastern’s campus and recorded all the per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion about the area, including ongoing con­struc­tion and the number of traffic and bike lanes.

Even though all of the stu­dents who devel­oped this app grad­u­ated this month, the Enabling Engi­neering stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion will con­tinue to work on it.  Enabling Engi­neering applies engi­neering tech­nolo­gies to build low-​​cost devices that improve the lives of the elderly and indi­vid­uals with phys­ical or cog­ni­tive disabilities.

“More than any­thing else, it is our hope to bring to atten­tion that it is pos­sible to create a software-​​based solu­tion that sig­nif­i­cantly improve the lives of those with dis­abil­i­ties,” Greene said.