Development of a Hazard Avoidance Smartphone App for Visually Impaired at Train Platform using LiDAR and Object Detection

Abstract

Since there have been accidents repeatedly involving the visually impaired persons falling from station platforms, this study tried to develop a smartphone app specifically for use at railway stations. By acquiring distance information with a LiDAR implemented in a smartphone, it will be easier to detect the height difference between station platforms and rail tracks, and the detection accuracy is expected to be improved. This paper shows experimental results using a PC instead of a smartphone to evaluate only the effectiveness of the proposed method algorithm.