Assisting the Visually Impaired with Situation Awareness: A New Perspective

Safe and independent mobility presents a significant challenge for visually impaired people, who must detect obstacles and navigate unfamiliar areas. Accurate and efficient solutions for mobility and pathfinding, particularly in recognizing currency, complicated by similar surfaces and sizes, are essential for the visually impaired. This paper proposes a system that assists the visually impaired by recognizing objects and their lateral positions and identifying currency notes. Serving as a comprehensive walking guide for both indoor and outdoor navigation, this system enhances spatial awareness and provides valuable information about surroundings. Our model can recognize fifteen classes of objects and has been evaluated with real-world items. Experimental results demonstrate its superior performance compared to existing approaches, highlighting its effectiveness in improving mobility and independence for visually impaired individuals.