Guiding the Visually Impaired: An Indoor Positioning System using RFID/NFC Technology

Abstract

Barriers and interference collectively limit the accuracy of GPS indoors, and as a result, it cannot be used for indoor navigation. No widely-adopted solution currently exists to assist the visually impaired with indoor navigation. In this paper, I describe an indoor positioning system I built that uses an autonomously functioning robot and RFID/NFC technology to help guide a visually impaired user to points of interest in an indoor space. In addition to computing the optimal path from a source to a destination, the system also has an effective user-to-robot interface, robot-to-user interface, feedback control in the form of line-following, stationary and non-stationary obstacle detection, rectangular-shaped obstacle navigation, 360° rotational capability, and the capability of real-time re-routing.