Cloud Video Guidance as “Deus ex Machina” for the Visually Impaired

Abstract

Technological advances in Cloud computing and networking are offering unique opportunities for assisting everyday activities of visually impaired persons. Of particular interest is the capitalization of these technologies in the domain of aiding mobility and environment perception. In this chapter, we describe a generic system architecture design and discuss research and engineering issues toward developing a modular open Cloud platform that can be used in a customized way to match specific activities of visually impaired people. This platform facilitates remote content delivery to support system services, such as complex object/scene recognition and route planning, but also it enables the visually impaired users to connect with remotely located persons for assistance or social interaction. At the core of the proposed framework rests a sensor-based system that streams data, particularly video, for further processing in the Cloud. Although a multitude of applications are based on Cloud computing for data stream processing and data fusion, the particular requirements that must be met by assistive technologies for the visually impaired pose unique research challenges that are outlined in the chapter. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.