Smartphone App Provides Realtime Navigation for People with Vision Loss

Engineers at Harvard University have developed a smartphone app called Mobilio to make it easier for blind or partially sighted people to navigate pathways outside safely and without bumping into obstacles.

As reported in Nature Biomedical Engineering , co-authors Raymond Liu and Patrick Slade, PhD, both based at Harvard, first carried out a survey of 112 people with blindness or moderate-to-severe visual impairment to find out what people wanted from an outside navigation aid before they designed Mobilio.

Key features requested by participants included the ability to perform turn-by-turn directions, give path guidance and to detect and avoid obstacles. “Existing navigation tools such as white canes, guide dogs and electronic travel aids often lack one or more of these criteria and may be expensive or inaccessible,” write the authors.