Intelligent Lighting Device with Mapping Sensor for Visually Impaired Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional lighting devices lack the ability to provide effective navigational assistance to visually impaired individuals, as they are not integrated with advanced technologies that can communicate and process data to provide real-time environmental information.
Innovation Solution
The development of intelligent lighting devices equipped with mapping sensors and communication interfaces that generate and transmit data to user wearable devices, such as smart glasses, to provide navigational assistance through visual, auditory, or tactile feedback.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If traditional lighting devices are used, then the device structure remains simple, but the ability to provide navigational assistance to visually impaired individuals is insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The lighting device is enhanced with multiple functions beyond basic illumination, including mapping sensor integration for environmental data collection, wireless communication capabilities for data transmission, and collaboration with wearable devices to provide navigational assistance. This multi-functionality allows a single device to serve both traditional lighting purposes and assistive navigation functions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent combines the lighting device with mapping sensors and communication interfaces, merging previously separate functions (lighting, sensing, communication) into a single integrated system. This consolidation enables the lighting device to collect environmental data, process it, and transmit it to wearable devices for providing navigational information to visually impaired users.
2Loss of information
If lighting devices are equipped with mapping sensors and communication interfaces, then real-time environmental information can be provided to users, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The lighting device acts as an intermediary between the physical environment and the user's wearable device. It collects environmental data through mapping sensors, processes this information, and transmits it wirelessly to the wearable device, which then presents the information in a user-friendly format. This intermediary role enables effective information transfer while distributing system complexity across multiple components.
3Adaptability or versatility
If intelligent lighting devices with sensors and communication capabilities are deployed, then navigational assistance is enhanced, but the manufacturing cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The assistive lighting system is divided into separate functional modules: the lighting device with integrated sensors, the wireless communication interface, and the wearable user device. This segmentation allows each component to be manufactured and tested independently, then assembled into a complete system, reducing overall manufacturing complexity while maintaining full functionality.
Data Source
AI summary
A lighting device obtains data related to objects and boundaries in an area in the vicinity of the lighting device, and a user wearable device provides a display (e.g. an augmented reality display based on the data related to the objects and the area boundaries) for a user/wearer. The lighting device includes a mapping sensor that collects data related to the objects and boundaries in the area. The user wearable device includes a camera or other optical sensor and wireless communication capability. The user wearable device is provided with mapping data that is presented on a display of the user wearable device. The communications and display capabilities allow the user wearable device to obtain room mapping information related to area in the vicinity of the lighting device in order to provide navigational assistance to a visually impaired person in the area.