Effects of Presenting People Flow Information by Vibrotactile Stimulation for Visually Impaired People on Behavior Decision

Abstract

Many studies have been conducted on walking support for visually impaired people. However, only a few studies have contributed to the wide understanding of their surrounding environment. In this study, the focus was on the flow of people in environmental information. The flow of people is formed by the presence of many pedestrians in the surroundings of the walking environment. If visually impaired people can independently make decisions by grasping the dynamic environment of people flow, they can walk with ease and peace of mind. A method is proposed that extracts people flow information and selects the information necessary for understanding the environment. The method utilizes vibrotactile stimulation. The effectiveness of the proposed method in determining the surrounding environment and the influence of vibration information on behavior decisions were verified.