A wearable stereo vision system for visually impaired

In recent years, a number of stereovision-capable devices emerge as travel aids for the visually impaired. However, these head-mounted devices are bulky and can only assist a user to avoid obstacles. In this paper, we detail a wearable stereovision system that can not only help avoid obstacles, but also stream real-time video feed via the 3G network. This wearable device is composed of an eyeglasses and a power-efficient embedded processing device. On one end, the eyeglasses carries two miniature cameras for the stereo-imaging. On the other end, we utilize a FPGA and FIFO buffers to synchronize and combine the stereo-images. Moreover, through a series of parallel programming techniques, we achieve a real-time stereo-matching on the embedded processor. In addition, the video captured by this system can be streamed to a mobile device over the 3G network. A prominent application of this device is that, the healthy sighted individual can make use of the live video feed to provide logistical guidance to a visually impaired user.