Smartphone application through sketchup helping blind and impaired persons to navigate through a place easily

The engineers at the University of Nevada, Reno launched a new system alias Navatar. This system provides a great assistance to blind or visually-impaired person by allowing them to locate through a large building (a hospital, lab, office etc) easily.

Navatar uses the sensors in a smartphone to detect progress along a map of a building.

In this system a 3-D map of the building is generated with SketchUp program. The user places it in their starting point and destination and the system provides them turn-by-turn directions and at the same time, calculates footsteps and notices changes in orientation so as to obtain a rough idea of the position of the user in the building.

By utilizing the sensors in the phone and map data, Navatar can trace the user to within six feet and perfectly find someone into the surrounding area of their destination. Besides, this new system can also give dictation by telling "turn right, then second door on the left," etc. and thus help user to easily find the way into the area.

This new system can also be helpful in some other situation like when a fireman is navigating a smoky and unknown building or a person is locating their way around a large area as for instance an airport.


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