• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.223-234
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• 2017

The audible pedestrian signal (APS) is an add-on device which connects to the pedestrian signaling device and informs the contents and changes of the signaling by sound. It provides walking direction information of the pedestrian crossing so that the blind people can safely cross the pedestrian crossing. In an intersection where a plurality of audible pedestrian signal (APS) are installed at an intersection crosswalk, existing audible pedestrian signal (APS) operate simultaneously in the communication radius of a wireless remote controller, which may cause confusion for the blind people and the public may complain about the noise. In this paper, we developed a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)-based audible pedestrian signal (APS) system capable of supporting two-way communications with a smart-phone that can cross the intersection safely and improve the walking comfort and traffic safety for the blind people. The proposed method is a method in which the BLE beacon communication based audible pedestrian signal (APS) presents active service to the blind people, and the existing audible pedestrian signal (APS) is a way of requesting the passive service by the blind people with the wireless remote control by the unidirectional communication based on 358Mhz. The developed system is installed in the crossroad of Doma-dong, Seo-gu, Daejeon, and it is tested and operated by the blind people. The satisfaction evaluation and analysis of the audible pedestrian signal (APS) for the blind people have good results and are planned to be expanded in the future.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 2017

Audible Pedestrian Signal(APS) is an additional equipment to provide information about pedestrian signals in non-visual formats such as audible tones and verbal messages. It can provide information to pedestrians about the location and directions of a crosswalk, and the traffic signal status. In general, a pedestrian who is visually impaired uses a 358.5MHz wireless remote controller to activate the APS and crosses at the crosswalk with the help of the APS. The existing APS can only receive an activation message from the remote controller. Therefore, the APS has an issue, especially at intersections, that all APSs within the communication range of the remote controller are activated simultaneously. It makes to confuse the visual impaired pedestrians. In this paper, we propose a BLE-enabled APS that can enable two-way communication via Bluetooth with a smartphone. The proposed system solves the problem and provides them with additional information, so that visually impaired pedestrians can cross at the crosswalk more conveniently.