DEMO-16: Real World VR Proxies to Support Blind People in Mobility Training

Aussteller: Kreimeier, Julian1,2, Götzelmann, Timo¹
¹ Nuremberg Institute of Technology
² Technische Universität Dresden, Institute of Applied Computer Science

Mobility training is an essential part of blind people’s education in order to move in public spaces. In order to safely learn new routes in public space, however, a seeing trainer must assist the blind person. With the increasing availability of VR hardware, it is possible to transfer real spatial environments to virtual representations. The digitized environments can be used as a basis for this training without safety problems by real world hazards. This allows to cope with the limited resources of sighted assistants and enables blind people to become more independent. We propose to capture real public spaces (such as sidewalks, train stations etc.) and make them in this way ascertainable. Orientation and mobility can be trained in this digital model via multimodal sensory feedback while involving intuitive locomotion and white cane exploration. In our demo, you can have a walk in such a virtual environment and explore it both visually and non-visually. You can experience firsthand how difficult it can be for blind people to explore unknown rooms and what benefits VR technology can offer to learn these in advance. Take 5-10 minutes of time, drop by, and give it a try.

YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/IPF9UI4PQc8