ESI 2.0


Project description

In Germany live around 200,000 blind and more than 1 million visually impaired people. The possibility to practice sports is very limited for visually impaired or blind persons. Traditional devices as the white cane or a guide dog are as well as today’s existing technical systems, intended for navigational purposes during walking, not appropriate for running demands. Visually impaired or blind joggers are dependent on an accompanying person who transmits direction instructions by a commonly grasped rod or audio commands. An entirely self-determined training independently from time schedules and the availability of a guide is therefore not possible. Additionally the dependence on other persons and the missing possibility to conduct sports alone is often felt very restricting by the involved people.

The Aim of this project is, based on an existing embedded navigation system, to evaluate further optimization strategies. Therefore the system should be usable in different weather conditions (e.g. strong solar irridation, clouds and light rain), as well as on different grounds (e.g. tartan or forest tracks). A feedback system is used to provide navigation information to the athlete. Finally energy harvesting methods get evaluated for power supply.