Blindshopping: Enabling Accessible Shopping for Visually Impaired People Through Mobile Technologies (icost)

Abstract

BlindShopping is a mobile low-cost easily-deployable system devised to allow visually impaired people to do shopping autonomously within a supermarket. Its main contributions are: a) a user navigation component combining an RFID reader on the tip of a white cane and mobile technology, and b) a product recognition component that uses embossed QR codes placed on product shelves and an Android phone camera for their identification. Furthermore, it provides a web-based management component to easily configure the system, generating and binding barcode tags for product shelves and RFID tag markers attached to the supermarket floor.