Augmented Reality Tactile Map with Hand Gesture Recognition

Ryosuke Ichikari, Tenshi Yanagimachi, Takeshi Kurata

Abstract: Paper tactile maps are regarded as a very useful tool for pre-journey learning for visually-impaired people. In order to provide the solution for the perceptual difficulties and the limitation of the amount of contents of the paper tactile maps, we propose the augmented reality (AR) tactile map system. With our AR tactile map, the physical tactile map can be augmented by audio and visual feedbacks which are enlarging/enhancing the focused area and voice over of the POR/POI according to the user’s input. As the interface for the AR tactile map, we adopt intuitive user interfaces with hand gesture recognition by using an RGB-D camera. We implemented a prototype according to the requirements determined by the discussion including the visually-impaired people.