Multi-faceted Sensory Substitution for Curb Alerting: A Pilot Investigation in Persons with Blindness and Low Vision

Abstract

Curbs -- the edge of a raised sidewalk at the point where it meets a street -- crucial in urban environments where they help delineate safe pedestrian zones, from dangerous vehicular lanes. However, curbs themselves are significant navigation hazards, particularly for people who are blind or have low vision (pBLV). The challenges faced by pBLV in detecting and properly orientating themselves for these abrupt elevation changes can lead to falls and serious injuries. Despite recent advancements in assistive technologies, the detection and early warning of curbs remains a largely unsolved challenge. This paper aims to tackle this gap by introducing a novel, multi-faceted sensory substitution approach hosted on a smart wearable; the platform leverages an RGB camera and an embedded system to capture and segment curbs in real time and provide early warning and orientation information. The system utilizes YOLO (You Only Look Once) v8 segmentation model, trained on our custom curb dataset for the camera input. The output of the system consists of adaptive auditory beeps, abstract sonification, and speech, conveying information about the relative distance and orientation of curbs. Through human-subjects experimentation, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the system as compared to the white cane. Results show that our system can provide advanced warning through a larger safety window than the cane, while offering nearly identical curb orientation information.