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

尽管在为视力正常的人开发新的无线和移动应用方面做出了巨大的努力，但改善视障人士福祉的新型无线和移动应用在很大程度上仍未得到充分开发。视障人士每天面临的最大挑战是在不熟悉的室外/室内环境中安全快速地到达目的地。基于GPS的辅助设备可以极大地便利盲人的户外导航，但不幸的是，它在缺乏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，原型设计和评估安全可用的室内导航系统。该研究的科学前景将扩大对视障人士室内导航的基本认识，并有可能开辟新的研究方向。所提出的技术的成功开发和实施将对视障人士像正常人一样使用室内导航和寻路产生深远的影响，从而显著改善美国和世界各地数百万视障用户的移动性和福祉。拟议的研究包括六个主要研究重点。第一个重点是研究新颖的基于众包的技术，为任意室内场地构建精确的室内平面图，无论是否有大的开放空间。第二个重点是开发安全的合作技术，以检测和最小化不诚实的众包工人提交的虚假移动痕迹的影响。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描述和可视化室内场地。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技术，为视障人士提供与正常人相似的室内导航体验。最后一个重点是实现所提出的室内导航系统，并全面评估其有效性，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.