Intelligent Situation Awareness Navigation Aid

Independent travel and active interactions with the surrounding environment present significant daily challenges for visually impaired individuals, which can lead to reduced quality of life and compromised safety. To begin to address these challenges, the Federal Highway Administration’s Exploratory Advanced Research (EAR) Program funded research projects to examine new technology solutions to provide guidance assistance to visually impaired pedestrians navigating in large, unstructured environments.

Researchers demonstrated one of three different wayfinding technologies at the U.S. Department of Transportation Headquarters in Washington, DC. The Intelligent Situation Awareness and Navigation Aid (ISANA) provides a wearable technology that interprets the visual environment in real time and uses GPS-like voice guidance to assist the user. Click here to see a video of the demonstration.

ISANA and two other wayfinding technologies funded through the EAR Program were conducted in coordination with the Volpe Center, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Intelligent Transportation Systems—Joint Program Office. More information about the Assistive Technologies for Visually Impaired Persons research projects is available at https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/advancedresearch/pubs/15040/index.cfm.

Exploratory Advanced Research Project Intelligent Situation Awareness Navigation Aid Demonstration Video Script

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