A Blind Navigation System Using RFID for Indoor

Environments
Sakmongkon Chumkamon, Peranitti Tuvaphanthaphiphat, Phongsak Keeratiwintakorn*
Department of Electrical Engineering
King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand
Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]*

Abstract-A location and tracking system becomes very can use it to find an emergency exit in the smoky
important to our future world of pervasive computing, where environments where it is difficult to see the way.
information is all around us. Location is one of the most needed
information for emerging and future applications. Since the Several techniques have been proposed for indoor
public use of GPS satellite is allowed, several state-of-the-art navigation system. For example, a fingerprinting technique is
devices become part of our life, e.g. a car navigator and a mobile used with Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) to calculate
phone with a built-in GPS receiver. However, location a current location of a device [1]. A radio signal emitter is
information for indoor environments is still very limited. Several used to broadcast a beacon as a reference to calculate a
techniques are proposed to get location information in buildings
such as using a radio signal triangulation, a radio signal (beacon) distance from the emitter to a device [2]. A Radio Frequency
emitter, or signal fingerprinting. Using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag is used to store its location as a
Identification (RFID) tags is a new way of giving location reference point to an RFID reader [3]. Some navigation
information to users. Due to its passive communication circuit, system has proposed a hybrid solution using both GPS and
RFID tags can be embedded almost anywhere without an energy RFID to retrieve location information for disabilities [4].
source. The tags stores location information and gives it to any
reader that is within a proximity range which can be up to 10-15 Similar work of RFID-based on-foot navigation for outdoor
meters for UHF RFID systems. We propose an RFID-based and indoor environments with experiments is shown in [5] and
system for navigation in a building for blind people or visually [6]. An active RFID-based navigation system is proposed to
impaired. The system relies on the location information on the use radio signal strength of the active RFID signal, and the
tag, a user’s destination, and a routing server where the shortest result shows little accuracy improvement [7].
route from the user’s current location to the destination. The
navigation device communicates with the routing server using In this paper, we proposed an RFID based navigation
GPRS networks. We build a prototype based on our design and system for in-building navigation for blind people. Our
show some results. We found that there are some delay problems proposed system helps blind people to find a shortest path
in the devices which are the communication delay due to the cold from his current location to a destination. It also helps to them
start cycle of a GPRS modem and the voice delay due to the file when they get lost by automatically detecting the lost and
transfer delay from a MMC module.
recalculate a new route to the same destination. Our proposed
I. INTRODUCTION system embeds RFID tags into a footpath that can be read by
an RFID reader with a cane antenna. Our proposed work can
In a pervasive computing world, location information is also be used as a tourist guide system for a museum or a
very precious. Several new emerging applications is based on navigation system for a rescue in hazardous environments
location information. For example, location information can where it is difficult to find an emergency exit.
be used to help users find what they need and where it is from For the rest of this paper, we discuss some related work in
the current location of the users. A tracking system can be Section II, and discuss our proposed work in Section III. The
used to prevent lost kids in a shopping mall by attaching experiment and results are explained in Section IV. We
location devices to them to locate their current location. conclude our work and suggest for future work in Section V.
Similarly, a navigation system is used to guide users to a
II. RELATED WORK
certain location. For example, a car navigator is used to guide
a driver to a destination based on the current location of the A group of researchers at National Institute of Standard and
vehicle in real-time or turn-by-turn. The location given to the Technology (NIST) has proposed an indoor navigation for
navigator is typically calculated by Global Position System first responders or firefighters using RFID system [3]. Each
(GPS) receiver that receives reference radio signals from GPS RFID tag is attached a location in a building as a location
satellites. Thus, the GPS-based navigation does not work for information reference. The RFID reader is attached to a
indoor navigation. An indoor navigation is important for firefighter and an inertial sensor system. When a firefighter
some applications. For example, people can utilize an indoor moves, the inertial sensor records the movement and estimates
navigation system to locate devices throughout a building, the location of the firefighter. The location of the firefighter is
tourists can use it as a tour guide in a museum, or fire fighters adjusted when he passes through the point of location
reference which is the location of RFID tags. The feasibility
study of such navigation system has shown that it is possible a node in term of latitude and longitude. The location area is
to locate users in a building with the location error of 10% - identified by a set of paths, the path is defined by a set of links,
15% of the distance between waypoints. and the link is defined by a set of nodes.
Another RFID-based navigation system is proposed for a Secondly, the navigation device is an embedded system that
user friendly guidance system for disabilities [4]. The system is equipped with a microprocessor unit (MCU), an RFID
utilizes several technologies for the guidance including a GPS reader, a communication module, a user interface module, a
receiver attached to a Pocket PC to get location information, memory module. The proposed device is shown in Figure 3.
an RFID reader to get information from embedded RFID The MCU is PIC18LF4620 with 3986 bytes of SRAM, 64
tracks, a Infrared sensor to get a traveling direction. The Kbytes of Flash memory, and 1024 bytes of EEROM. The
improved prototype replaces the Pocket PC with a GPS- RFID reader is from IET operating at 134.2 kHz that is
enabled mobile phone. The system has been tested with 46 compliant to ISO11784/5 standard. The reader is connected to
persons including visually impaired, blind, low vision, hearing MCU via RS-232 Serial port. The reader retrieves the
impaired, wheelchair users, physically impaired and elderly. information from a tag and transfers it to the MCU for further
Our proposed system is similar to that proposed in [4] processing. The communication module communicates with
except that our system is for indoor environment that utilizes the navigation server to send a request and to receive a
only RFID system for location information retrieval. In planned route from the server for navigation. We use the
addition, our proposed system adds a routing system that is GPRS module to convey information via cellular networks.
used to help users to navigate to a destination with a shortest The connection to the server is only when the navigation starts
path. The routing system is also used to help lost users to find or when the user navigates out of the planned route to reduce
a new route to the same destination. the communication cost.

Figure 2. The proposed blind navigation system

Figure 1. The guidance system for a blind person [4]

III. BLIND NAVIGATION SYSTEM RFID

The proposed blind navigation system is composed of three Tag
RFID RFID
subsystems, the track infrastructure, the navigation device, and Tag
RFID Reader
the navigation server as shown in Figure 2. The track Tag
RFID
Tag
Serial

infrastructure is composed of RFID tags. Each tag can be

embedded into a stone block and put it on a footpath. The
RFID stone block is also used by blind people for navigation.
User MCU
Alternatively, each tag can be installed at sign posts along a Serial
Input PIC GPRS
pathway. The type of RFID tags is selected upon the usage.
For the stone block, we select the LF RFID tags since the
Serial

radio signal penetrates the block better. The tags can be

installed along the footpath or at least at the junction of the
footpath. The tag stores the tag ID, and the tag location. To MP3
Speaker
reduce the massive amount of location information for users, SD/MMC
the location can be hierarchically divided; for example, each
tag location is identified by a location area, a path, a link, and Figure 3. The proposed navigation device
 Last, the navigation server receives tag information of the IV. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS
current location and the destination location. Then, using the
shortest path algorithm the server calculates the shortest route We have built a system prototype including a simulated
according to the distance. The whole route is returned to the map of 16 tags to form a grid of 4x4 paths. Each tag contains
device for navigate. Users may navigate outside the Tag ID and its location. All locations of the tags are used to
designated route or get lost; therefore, the device detects the calculate the distance between tags used as the routing cost of
incident according to the location information from tags along the shortest path algorithm. Figure 5 is the snapshot of the
the route, and sends a new request back to the server to Java-based navigation server program that shows the tag
calculate a new route to the same destination based on the new locations on the left and the monitoring window on the right
current location information. Figure 4 shows the flowchart of of the figure. Between each tag is the cost of the routing in
the navigation program that explains how the navigation term of distance.
works.

Start

Speak the menu

Wait for Input

Enter a
destination point

Figure 5. A simulated map formed by a grid of 4x4 paths

Read a starting
point The prototype of the navigation device is shown in Figure 6.
The actual size of the prototype is about 12 x 18 x 6 cm in
Send data to Server dimension and about 0.5 kg by weight, not including the tag
reader. The tag reader is about 22 x 12 x 5 cm in dimension
by GPRS
and about 0.4 kg by weight. The device is portable equipped
with a headphone for blind navigation where only voice is
used to guide the users to navigate. The device is operated by
Server finds a a rechargeable 9V battery that can last about 6 hours. The
shortest route device is attached to a user as shown in Figure 7 with a
navigation cane for blind people.

Reading the point

along the route
No

Yes
Is current position Is current position
in the route? the destination?

No Yes
Server finds a new
shortest route Restart

Figure 6. The prototype of the navigation device with a headphone

Figure 4. The flowchart of the navigation program
 We have tested our system by a simulation of the navigation.
First, a user is at Point A to start the navigation and to go to
Point P as his destination. The server finds a route according V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
to the user request, and the result is shown in Figure 8. We
then test if the routing cost or the distance between points is We have proposed an RFID system for blind navigation
changed; a new route from Point A to Point P is returned. The which can be used by blind people, by tourists, or by fire
new route given to the user is shown in Figure 9. fighters for a rescue in a building with smoke. A system
prototype which includes RFID tags embedded in a footpath
block, the embedded system as a navigation device, and a
navigation server which is remotely connected to the device
via the Internet. The system prototype has shown the
promising result although its size is still large. We also found
some communication delay in the device to connect to our
server for the first time. This is due to the cold start cycle of
the GPRS module. There is also some delay in the voice
playback where the voice file is read from MMC module. In
our future work, we will reduce the cycle delay by using a pre-
start cycle. Additionally, we will improve the voice playback
module by storing some frequently-used words in the ROM
and pre-load some words in the RAM module for faster
speech transfer or using a speech synthesizer to generate voice.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This project is supported by National Electronics and
Figure 7. The navigation device attached to a user with a headphone and the Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)
RFID antenna built-in cane (http://www.nectec.or.th) and IE Technology Co., Ltd.
(http://www.iet.co.th). We would like to thank IE Technology
staff to help us build the RFID reader cane.

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Figure 8. The shortest route from Point A to Point P
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Figure 9. The new route is given after the user gets lost