Host: Japan Society for Fuzzy Theory and Intelligent Informatics (SOFT)
In this article we describe a method of sharing information between a tactile map (for navigation purpose) on a paper and an online-map on the information terminals (say a smartphone used by the sighted) via "electronic pen" technology (which is commonly used as an input method of hand-written characters). It is based on a synchronizing of a touched point on the tactile (paper) map with the corresponding point on the online-map achieved through the following steps: 1) Create a road-only map in SVG (scalable vector graphics) form from the given (target) online-map and copy it onto a tactile (i.e. touch sensible) paper, 2) point on the tactile map by touching electronic pen in it, then the coordinates (x, y) of the touched point is synchronized by the electronic pen synchronization mechanism and mapped onto the corresponding point in the online-map (we assume that a proper calibration is done beforehand between the road-only map and the original-online map). Thus, various information of the online-map along the roads can be provided to the visually impaired user in the text form from the online-map in the similar way as to the sighted user.
