Exploring the outdoor performance of a LiDAR-based ground plane checking system for the visually impaired

INTRODUCTION: Individuals with visual impairments face a variety of challenges in their daily lives, from daily activities to physical world navigation. One of the biggest challenges is the ability to travel around safely and independently. This challenge is complicated and stressed to the visually impaired as the inability to perform obstacles or ground plane checking will result in severe injury or even death.

OBJECTIVES: This work aims to prove the outdoor performance of the developed solution in detecting and recognising the frontal ground plane conditions.

METHODS: The proposed model uses a LiDAR module as a distance-measuring tool to perform ground plane checking.

RESULTS: In the selected outdoor path-based scenarios, the ground plane checking system succeeded in achieving an overall recognition rate of 93.10%, with an overall false positive rate of 2.72% and average false negative rate of 4.25%.

CONCLUSION: Overall, the findings showed the ability of the proposed model to provide effective frontal ground plane checking for the visually impaired.