A ROS 2-Based Wearable Navigation Architecture for Visually Impaired Users Using ToF and GNSS: A Proposed System and Evaluation Framework

Author

Jibin B Mathew, Mohana Vel S, Manigandan E

Abstract

 Independent mobility remains a significant challenge for visually impaired individuals, particularly when transitioning between indoor and outdoor environments where the reliability of positioning technologies differs sharply. This paper presents a proposed wearable assistive navigation architecture that combines time-of-flight (ToF)-based indoor sensing with GNSS-based outdoor positioning, coordinated through a ROS 2 architecture distributed across smart glasses and a sensor-equipped smart shoe, with guidance delivered through an audio headset and shoe-mounted haptic motors. This is a conceptual, design-stage paper that presents the proposed system architecture, candidate hardware components, proposed ROS 2 node design, and a proposed evaluation framework for future assessment of localization accuracy, obstacle-detection performance, mode-transition reliability, and usability. No hardware has been fabricated and no experiments have been conducted at the time of writing; accordingly, this paper reports no quantitative results. All proposed measurements are intended for a future prototype-validation study. The primary contribution is a distributed ROS 2 architecture that integrates head-mounted ToF and visual sensing with shoe-mounted proximity, inertial, pressure, and haptic sensing to support context-aware indoor–outdoor navigation.

Keywords

assistive navigation; visual impairment; wearable computing; ToF sensing; GNSS; sensor fusion; ROS 2; haptic feedback

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References

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