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Text to Speech through Bluetooth for People with Special Needs Navigation

Authors:
Eirini Barri
Christos Bouras
Apostolos Gkamas
Christina Koulouri
Evangelos Michos
Spyridon Aniceto Katsampiris Salgado

Keywords: GuideMe; GPS; BLE; TTS; indoor; navigation; trilateration; pathfinding; audio; voice;

Abstract:
As far as outdoor navigation is considered, the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is still one of the most (if not the most) commonly used approaches. Even though it is still considered an ideal solution for navigating in outdoor areas, challenges and problems arise when GPS is considered for navigation inside buildings due to the fact that GPS signals cannot penetrate walls/ceilings (e.g., shopping malls, hospitals, etc.) and because signals can be absorbed by the building walls. This paper’s contribution is navigation system that assists people with special needs with an audio guidance system that incorporates input from a voice recognition system. The central part of the system is a device that is able to identify the position and orientation of the person that carries it and provides the ability to navigate and route by voice commands. The suggested voice synthesis system is used, so as to guide the user through obstacles in indoor locations. The information of the precise location and orientation of the device is made available to the whole system, through the building’s network infrastructure, so that the user’s mobile phone, being connected to the same network and also to the user’s headset through BLE, is able to send audio commands. For the voice commands, Google Cloud Text-To-Speech(TTS) will be used, assuming that an online connection is active on the user’s device.

Pages: 13 to 18

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020

Publication date: September 27, 2020

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4006

ISBN: 978-1-61208-786-3

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from September 27, 2020 to October 1, 2020