Optimizing the Number of Bluetooth Beacons with Proximity Approach at Decision Points for Intermodal Navigation of Blind Pedestrians

Navigation in urban environments is very challenging for blind pedestrians. Although many navigation approaches using various principles or sensors to help visually impaired people exists nowadays they still have problems to navigate in complex buildings, find entrances to buildings or to navigate to correct public transport stops. Current solutions use a large number of sensor that needs to be installed in the environment needed to track every single move of the user. We present a solution to reduce the number of installed sensors by using previously developed set of landmark-enhanced navigation instructions allowing us to lower the necessary number of Bluetooth beacons by using them only for proximity notification at indoor decision points, indicating public transport station and entrances. The evaluation in the field study (N = 8) suggests a good potential of the approach, especially in terms of usability, recovery from going astray and beacon deployment cost. Further, we provide guidance on beacons placement in the environment.