NeTS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Secure and Usable Indoor Navigation for Individuals with Visual Impairment

尽管在针对有视力的人的新型无线和移动的应用方面做出了重大努力，但是用于改善视力受损个体的健康的新型无线和移动的应用仍然在很大程度上未被探索。对于视障人士来说，最大的日常挑战是在不熟悉的室外/室内环境中安全快速地导航到达所需的目的地。基于GPS的辅助设备可以极大地促进盲人的户外导航，不幸的是，这些辅助设备在缺乏GPS信号的室内环境中不起作用。该提案概述了一项具有挑战性的研究计划，旨在为视障人士开发，原型设计和评估一个安全且可用的室内导航系统。这项研究的科学前景将扩大对视障者室内导航的基本理解，并有可能开辟一个新的研究方向。所提出的技术的成功开发和实施将对视力受损的个人作为有视力的人进行室内导航和寻路产生深远的影响，从而显着改善美国和世界各地数百万视力受损用户的移动性和福祉。本研究包括六个主要研究方向。第一个重点是研究新的基于众包的技术，以构建准确的室内平面图任意室内场馆或没有大的开放空间。第二个重点是开发安全的合作技术，以检测和最大限度地减少不诚实的众包工作人员提交的虚假移动轨迹的影响。第三个重点是研究基于众包的室内图像数据库的构建，该数据库可以很好地表征和可视化室内场地。第四个重点是开发基于众包的技术，为视障人士提供精确的点对点室内导航。第五个重点是研究新的技术，可以为视障人士提供增强的室内导航体验，类似于正常人可以得到的。最后的推力是实现所提出的室内导航系统，并彻底评估其功效，效率和可用性。

Despite significant effort on novel wireless and mobile applications for sighted people, novel wireless and mobile applications to improve the wellbeing of visually impaired individuals remain largely underexplored. The biggest everyday challenge for visually impaired individuals is safe and quick navigation to reach a desired destination in unfamiliar outdoor/indoor environments. Outdoor navigation for unsighted people can be greatly facilitated by GPS-based aids which unfortunately do not work in indoor environments lack of GPS signals. This proposal outlines a challenging research plan on developing, prototyping, and evaluating a secure and usable indoor navigation system for the visually impaired. The scientific promise of the proposed research will expand the fundamental understandings about indoor navigation for the visually impaired with the potential to open a new research direction. Successful development and implementations of the proposed techniques will have profound impact on allowing visually impaired individuals to have indoor navigation and wayfinding as sighted people, thus significantly improving the mobility and wellbeing of millions of visually impaired users in the US and around the world. The proposed research consists of six main research thrusts. The first thrust is to investigate novel crowdsourcing-based techniques to construct accurate indoor floor plans for arbitrary indoor venues with or without large open spaces. The second thrust is to develop secure cooperative techniques to detect and minimize the impact of fake mobility traces submitted by dishonest crowdsourcing workers. The third thrust is to investigate crowdsourcing-based construction of an indoor image database that can well characterize and visualize an indoor venue. The fourth thrust is to develop crowdsourcing-based techniques to enable accurate point-to-point indoor navigation for the visually impaired. The fifth thrust is to investigate novel techniques that can provide visually impaired individuals enhanced indoor navigation experience similar to what sighted persons can get. The last thrust is to implement the proposed indoor navigation system and thoroughly evaluate its efficacy, efficiency, and usability.