• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.21-31
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• 2018

Korean banknotes are similar in size, and their braille tend to worn out as they get old. These characteristics of Korean banknotes make the blind people, who mainly rely on the braille, even harder to distinguish the banknotes. Not only that, this can even lead to economic loss. There are already existing systems for recognizing the banknotes, but they don't support Korean banknotes. Furthermore, because they are developed as a mobile application, it is not easy for the blind people to use the system. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a Raspberry Pi-based banknote recognition system that not only recognizes the Korean banknotes but also are easily accessible by the blind people. Our system starts recognition with a very simple action of the user, and the blind people can hear the recognition results by sound. In order to choose the best feature extraction algorithm that directly affects the performance of the system, we compare the performance of SIFT, SURF, and ORB, which are representative feature extraction algorithms at present, in real environments. Through experiments in various real environments, we adopted SIFT to implement our system, which showed the highest accuracy of 95%.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2020

Visually impaired people use tactile maps to get spatial information about their surrounding environment, find their way, and improve their independent mobility. However, classical tactile maps that make use of braille to describe the location within the map have several limitations, such as the lack of information due to constraints on space and limited feedback possibilities. This study describes the development of a new multi-modal interactive tactile map interface that addresses the challenges of tactile maps to improve the usability and independence of visually impaired people when using tactile maps. This interface adds touch gesture recognition to the surface of tactile maps and enables the users to verbally interact with a voice agent to receive feedback and information about navigation routes and points of interest. A low-cost prototype was developed to conduct usability tests that evaluated the interface through a survey and interview given to blind participants after using the prototype. The test results show that this interactive tactile map prototype provides improved usability for people over traditional tactile maps that use braille only. Participants reported that it was easier to find the starting point and points of interest they wished to navigate to with the prototype. Also, it improved self-reported independence and confidence compared with traditional tactile maps. Future work includes further development of the mobility solution based on the feedback received and an extensive quantitative study.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.114-121
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• 2009

The number of the disabled is increasing every year. Growing interest in social welfare, but still the disabled person in places is restricted on the activities are due to obstacles. This study proposes an improvement direction through an research and analysis of installation status of convenient facilities in social welfare halls was planned after that the law of increase of convenience for the disabled person is enforced in 1998. This study analyzed nine social welfare halls of seoul including Yongsan-gu(GW), Guro-gu(GD, HW), Yeongdeungpo-gu(SG), Seodaemun-gu(SD), Dobong-gu(DB), Nowon-gu(NS), Seongbuk-gu(WG) and Dongdaemun-gu(JG). The evaluation criteria for the installation of convenient facilities for the disabled person in each social welfare hall based on the law of increase of convenience for the disabled person, and referred to other data. Also, review the criteria for the installation of convenient facilities, and grasp the present situation through the survey of convenient facilities in social welfare halls, and provides the installation standards of convenient facilities. The result are as followings. There were many problems to be improved in approach of the intermediate space, parking lot, entrance of the inside space and corridor that must be installed for the convenience of the disabled. In the intermediate space, the slope of the ramp, curb, induction handle etc. for a safety must be installed. Parking spaces for the disabled must be located closest to the main entrance, an induction marker or the handle, and the attachment of a directional sign etc. must be improved. In the inside space, it is convenient for the disabled person use to install an automatic door and swing door simultaneously at the main entrance. And, the height of the door handle, an induction block, a braille display panels of the appropriate height in the entrance, a braille display in start and end of the stairs handle, the handle of the side wall, the stairs to prevent slippage etc. must be improved in the corridors. The case of the sanitation which is a recommendation item is equipped formally with disabled toilets are difficult to use. Information and other convenience facilities for the disabled person in all the social welfare halls were not considered.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.150-155
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• 2006

This study observes information education of facilities for the disabled. A certain facility for the disabled was selected in Daejeon to compare the educational environment for visually disabled of regular school for visually disabled and facilities for the disabled, and then personnel current situation by age and form of the disabled, teacher current situation by age, computer possessing current situation, weekly education schedule for the disabled, and equipment possessing current situation for visually disabled were observed. As a result, expansion of Braille education was necessary for the Braille skilled, which is the basis of information education information to visually disabled is insufficient, and forming of learning environment was desperate since equipment necessary for computer education was absurdly lacking unlike regular schools. Also, only 10 out of 21 teachers(47%) majored in social welfare or special education, and none majored in computer. It is because support for employment of those who majored social welfare, special education, and computer is insufficient compared to treatment for teachers at general schools at the facility for the disabled since teacher employment regulation at the facility for the disabled is not set. It is studied that providing high-quality of education environment to the disabled was desperate through physical and social treatment that suits nurturing of the professionally knowledge personnel through expansion of equipments and constant education and training based on government support to promote information education of the facility for the disabled.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.3-14
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• 2010

As the seniors and the disabled has increased, the demand for cultural centers has also increased in many local areas. This means that the local cultural centers designed from the viewpoint of universal design are needed, so that to be used by everyone without any difficulties. This study examined the applicability of universal design principles to the public service areas of the local cultural centers. The subject cultural centers were three local ones which had seating capacity of more than 1,000 and opened after the year of 2,000 in Gyungnam. The spatial scopes of the study were six public service areas of the local cultural centers : entrance area, corridor and pathway, stair, ramp, elevator, and rest room. The total 65 items for evaluating the applicability of universal design were selected and examined for six areas. On the whole, accessibility, such as wide pathway and flat floor was good. However, the following improvements were needed. 1) Handrails and rounded corner were needed on walls. 2) Consideration of the visually impaired like as braille sign was needed. 3) The handrails on ramp should be installed for usability. 4) The automatic door would be more useful to the physically disabled users. 5) Wider space and familiar handrail design and color were needed in the rest rooms for the handicapped.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.11b
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• pp.259-262
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• 2003

In this paper, we studied the path determination algorithm of the guidance robot for the visually impaired. Using the guidance robot for the visually impaired, the visually impaired can go to the destination where they want without other's heir. The navigation path of the guidance robot for the visually impaired must be the optimal path not only the shortest but also the most safe, which is different from a shortest path for common people. GPS and electronic map are used for the location information of the visually impaired. We corrected the error by converting the coordinates of location information from GPS, which includes maximum several tens of meters error, to the coordinates of electronic map. Information such as simple path and direction to the destination is not enough because it may be different between a going path from the start to the destination and a coming path from the destination to the start as around environment. So, we added information which can be dangerous for the visually impaired such as driveway, sidewalk without braille blocks, crosswalk, stairs and overpass, each has weight value as dangerous degree, when matching the GPS information to the electronic map, enough large as 1:5,000 scale.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.759-764
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• 2009

In this paper designed One-Step mobile shopping system using Multipurpose Visual Language System(MVLS). MVLS is based on braille system, and list this to a square color box. This is can accomplish convenience of use and encipherment of fundamental personal information. Also, this system has advantage to fast communication speed because that has little size packets. Planed system does and fit this in shopping to graft together mobile-phone that the such MVLS and most of internal adult are possessing. User can more fast finish shopping just photographing and press the button that show on TV or PC monitor and printed materials etc. by camera of mobile phone.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.1102-1113
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• 2018

Vibrotactile feedback is widely used in designing non-visual interactions on mobile phones, such as message notification, non-visual reading, and blind use. In this work, novel vibrotactile codes are presented to implement a non-visual text reading system for mobile phones. The 26 letters of the English alphabet are formed in an index table with four rows and seven columns, and each letter is mapped using the codes of vibrations. Two kinds of vibrotactile codes are designed with the actuator's on and off states and with specific lengths (short and long) assigned to each state. To improve the efficiency of tactile perception and user satisfaction, three user experiments are conducted. The first experiment explores the maximum number of continuous vibrations and minimum vibration time of the actuator's on and off states that the human can perceive. The second experiment determines the minimum interval between continuous vibrations. The vibrotactile reading system is designed and evaluated in the third experiment according to the results of the two preceding experiments. Results show that the character reading accuracy reaches 91.7% and the character reading speed is approximately 617.8 ms. Our method has better reading efficiency and is easier to learn than the traditional Braille coding method.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.50-59
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• 2018

Generally, disabled people have a lot of bad health status at low income levels, the need for health care is higher than for non-disabled people. Although the number of persons with disabilities is increasing with each passing year, their medical services and support are still limited and limited. This problem is not so different from approach to medical information. Conventional medical information is usually printed and transmitted to the patient, but visually impaired people have difficulty accessing such printed information. In the case of the visually impaired, there are many cases where it is not possible to read not only the printed letter but also the braille because the acquired incidence is high. Therefore, this paper tried to solve this problem by transmitting the information of medicine by voice using RFID. In addition, ontology was used to select more accurate drug information. Currently, there are drug information sites provided by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. However, since duplicate information is scattered on these sites, the ontology was used to build up the database.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.89-101
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• 2006

Tactile sensation is one of the most important sensory functions for human perception of objects. Recently, there have been many technical challenges in the field of tactile display as well as tactile sensing. In this paper, we propose an innovative tactile display device based on soft actuator technology with ElectroActive Polymer(EAP). This device offers advantageous features over existing devices with respect to intrinsic flexibility, softness, ease of fabrication and miniaturization, high power density, and cost effectiveness. In particular, it can be adapted to various geometric configurations because it possesses structural flexibility, so it can be worn on any part of the human body such as finger, palm, and arm etc. It can be extensively applied as a wearable tactile display, a Braille device for the visually disabled, and a human interface in the future. A new design of the flexible actuator is proposed and its basic operational principles are discussed. In addition, a wearable tactile display device with $4{\times}5$ actuator array(20 actuator cells) is developed and its effectiveness is confirmed.