Navigation Problems in Blind-to-Blind Pedestrians Tele-assistance Navigation

We raise a question whether it is possible to build a large-scale navigation system for blind pedestrians where a blind person navigates another blind person remotely by mobile phone. We have conducted an experiment, in which we observed blind people navigating each other in a city center in 19 sessions. We focused on problems in the navigator’s attempts to direct the traveler to the destination. We observed 96 problems in total, classified them on the basis of the type of navigator or traveler activity and according to the location in which the problem occurred. Most of the problems occurred during the activities performed by the navigator. We extracted a set of guidelines based on analysis of navigation problems and successful navigation strategies. We have partially mapped the problem of tele-assistance navigation to POMDP based dialogue system.