Universal real-time navigational assistance (URNA): an urban bluetooth beacon for the blind

We describe a complete hardware/software system, dubbed Universal Real-Time Navigational Assistance (URNA), which enables communication of relevant location-aware information to a blind person carrying a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. Although URNA can be used for a number of different applications (e.g., an information kiosk at a shopping mall or public transit information at a bus stop), we concentrate on the challenging case of an urban intersection. Information provided to the user as he or she approaches the intersection includes a description of the intersection topology and real-time notification of the state of the traffic lights. The main FPGAbased control board (NavCon) interfaces with a traffic controller and with the Bluetooth modules, which are each mounted atop the intersection's pedestrian heads (pedheads) the lights signaling a pedestrian when to `WALK' or `DON'T WALK'. The cell phone software (PedNav), written in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), uses Te...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: MOBISYS
• Authors: S. Bohonos, A. Lee, A. Malik, C. Thai, Roberto Manduchi
• Keywords: Bluetooth-enabled Cell Phone, Intersection Topology, MOBISYS 2007, Urban Intersection, Wireless Networks