Indoor Spatial Cognition for the Hearing/Visually Impaired: Google ARCore Augmented Interaction Using WiFi Map

Over 430 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, and 2.2 billion suffer from vision impairment. Assisting these populations with enhanced indoor navigation tools is critical for improving their independence and quality of life. This research advances existing indoor spatial cognition systems for individuals with hearing or visual impairments by developing two Java-based Android applications on the Android 10 operating system. The first application gathers the WiFi BSSIDs data via the Java Android class WifiManager to design a WiFi map inside the multistage building. In the second application, the WiFi map is employed to localize individuals with impairments and provide audio feedback for the visually impaired; for individuals with disabling hearing loss, the feedback is provided in a form of 3D GLB colored virtual object with textual information via the Google ARCore augmented reality library. Experimental results show a 100 % positioning accuracy in indoor localization at the multistage academic building at the University of Central Asia (Naryn campus, Kyrgyzstan).