With feedbackfromthesevolunteers,wedevelopedalightweight,smallandunobtrusive prototype equipped with a tiny stereo camera and an embedded system on a single board computer to capture the samples from 10 different locations. We describe instrument development, datacollection, preprocessing, annotation, and experiments conducted.

According to World Health Organization, there is an estimated 2.2 billion people

According to World Health Organization, there is an estimated 2.2 billion people with a near or distance vision impairment worldwide. Difficulty in self-navigation is one of the greatest challenges to independence for the blind and low vision (BLV) people. Through consultations with several BLV service providers, we realized that negotiating surface discontinuities is one of the very prominent challenges when navigating an outdoor environment within the urban. Surface discontinuities are commonly formed by rises and drop-offs along a pathway. They could be a threat to balancing during a walk and perceiving such a threat is highly challenging to the BLVs.