A Proposal of Obstacle Detection Technology Using the View-Aid System

We have been developing a portable system that low vision people can verify life environment without other people´s supports. We call this system view-aid. Viewaid takes a picture with small, wireless CMOS camera when low-vision people want to verify life environment. Images taken with this camera are transmitted to the PDA with the analogue signal of 1.2 GHz band. It is received by the receiver, and the analogue signal is converted into digital signal and it sends to the PDA with USB connection. We are developing the system that supports walking outdoor safely for low-vision people who have the visual-field-constriction using view-aid. This system combines the still image processing and the video image processing to pictures taken by the camera. And it informs the user of detected obstacle.