HOMERE: a multimodal system for visually impaired people to explore virtual environments

The paper describes the HOMERE system: a multimodal system dedicated to visually impaired people to explore and navigate inside virtual environments. The system addresses three main applications: preparation for the visit of an existing site, training for the use of a blind cane, and ludic exploration of virtual worlds. The HOMERE system provides the user with different sensations when navigating inside a virtual world: a force feedback corresponding to the manipulation of a virtual blind cane, a thermal feedback corresponding to the simulation of a virtual sun, and an auditory feedback in spatialized conditions corresponding to the ambient atmosphere and specific events in the simulation. A visual feedback of the scene is also provided to enable sighted people to follow the navigation of the main user. HOMERE has been tested by several visually impaired people who were all confident about the potential of this prototype.