An assistive lowvision platform that augments spatial cognition through proprioceptive guidance: PointtoTellandTouch Spatial cognition, as gained through the sense of vision, is one of the most important capabilities of human beings. However, for the visually impaired (VI), lack of this perceptual capability poses great challenges in their life. Therefore, we have designed PointtoTellandTouch, a wearable system with an ergonomic humanmachine interface, for assisting the VI with active environmental exploration, with a particular focus on spatial intelligence and navigation to objects of interest in an alien environment. Our key idea is to link visual signals, as decoded synthetically, to the VIxe2x80x99s proprioception for more intelligible guidance, in addition to visiontoaudio assistance, i.e., finger pose, as indicated by pointing, is used as xe2x80x9cproprioceptive laser pointerxe2x80x9d to target an object in that line of sight. The whole system consists of two features, PointtoTell and PointtoTouch, both of which can work independently or cooperatively. The PointtoTell feature contains a camera with a novel onestage neural network tailored for blindcentered object detection and recognition, and a headphone telling the VI the semantic label and distance from the pointed object. the PointtoTouch, the second feature, leverages a vibrating wrist band to create a haptic feedback tool that supplements the initial vectorial guidance provided by the first stage (hand pose being direction and the distance being the extent, offered through audio cues). Both platform features utilize proprioception or joint position sense. Through hand pose, the VI end user knows where he or she is pointing relative to their egocentric coordinate system and we are able to use this foundation to build spatial intelligence. Our successful indoor experiments demonstrate the proposed system to be effective and reliable in helping the VI gain spatial cognition and explore the world in a more intuitive way.

Providing navigation assistance through ForceHand: a wearable forcefeedback glove Conveying information through forcefeedback has multiple advantages as compared to auditory or visual information transfer. Kinesthetic senses, in general, have shown enormous importance in human communication and to the very experience of being human. Kinesthetic learners tend to learn complex tasks through forcefeedback and tactile sensations, in much lesser time as compared to auditory and visual learners. Navigation cues provided through forcefeedback could eliminate the need for intensively engaging oneself to mobile devices. This type of feedback cue could also eliminate the need for auditory and visual engagement of the user, which can help sustained awareness of the proximity. This paper attempts the realization of a navigation assistant using a forcefeedback glove enabled with lowpressure pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs). This glove enables the user to receive navigation cues through forcefeedback on the forearm. We used a gaming environment to evaluate the feasibility of using the glove as a navigation assistant. The gaming experiment also provided vast subjective feedback. 89.5% of the participants chose forcefeedback as their most preferred type of cue. In addition, an experiment was carried out to identify the optimum resolution of input air pressure that could be successfully differentiated by the users. The average % accuracy in identifying the correct larger force from pairs of forces was found to be 97.6%, 89.2%, 80.8%, and 75.6%, respectively, for resolutions of 20, 15, 10, and 5kPa.