AmIE: An Ambient Intelligent Environment for Blind and Visually Impaired People

The Internet of things (IoT) is a revolutionary technology that is rapidly changing our world. IoT systems are becoming essential in modern life; traditional devices are becoming ubiquitous, connected, wireless, and smart. The aim of this investigation is to develop an IoT context-aware system that creates an Ambient Intelligence environment; in an apartment, house, or a building; to assist blind, visually-impaired, and elderly people. The main challenges that the system addresses include supporting assisted navigation, communication, security, and safe-living at an affordable cost. The proposed solution aims at providing effective indoor navigation, an easy-to-deploy system, a multilingual user-friendly interface and supports speech instructions. The proposed system is supported by sensors, communication nodes, control processors, wireless Internet access, a smart watch, to name but a few. The chapter includes studying the effectiveness of adding Bluetooth low energy devices at doors, stairs, walls, exit signs, service rooms, and more to enable accurate navigation. In addition, an investigation is included on the training needed by the users as related to the adoption of such a modern tool. System testing includes multiple navigation scenarios, accuracies, reliability of interactions, and the effectiveness of the multilingual features. System testing, analysis, and evaluation confirm the effectiveness of the developed system in application.