Fujitsu Adapts Android Smartphones As Location Guides for the Blind

Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and Fujitsu announced their joint development of an indoor support system for the blind that uses ultra wide band (UWB) technology and a smartphone.

The system is able to provide real-time positioning data, even indoors where GPS cannot be used, and provide audio instructions on the distance and direction to a destination to help guide the blind. Currently there are systems under development that use GPS with mobile terminals to provide audio instructions to an outdoor destination. GPS, however, cannot be reliably used indoors. Accordingly, NICT and Fujitsu decided to use a UWB positioning system, which can provide highly precise positioning indoors, in real time with a granularity of less than several tens of centimeters.