NAVI: Navigation aid for the visually impaired

This paper describes a voice navigational system for the visually impaired which runs on the user's smart-phone as an application and requires no additional expensive or heavy hardware. This system requires just the live video stream from the user's phone camera and an internet connection, and hence can be used on the most basic of smart-phones. The system proposed here identifies obstacles in front of the user and approaching obstacles, and is able to classify the obstacle into categories like car, human, dog, door or chair along with a direction of approach which would be either left, right or middle, in real time. It is also able to recognize faces of some predetermined people that the user desires. An audio feedback is given to the user. This system does not aim to eliminate the walking stick, but is meant to be used along with it essentially expanding the range of awareness of the user.