A Kinect-Based Wearable Face Recognition System to Aid Visually Impaired Users

Author(s)

Neto, Laurindo Britto ; Grijalva, Felipe ; Margareth Lima Maike, Vanessa Regina ; Martini, Luiz Cesar ; Florencio, Dinei ; Calani Baranauskas, Maria Cecilia ; Rocha, Anderson ; Goldenstein, Siome

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON HUMAN-MACHINE SYSTEMS; v. 47, n. 1, p. 52-64, FEB 2017.
• Web of Science Citations: 22

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a real-time face recognition (and announcement) system targeted at aiding the blind and low-vision people. The system uses a Microsoft Kinect sensor as a wearable device, performs face detection, and uses temporal coherence along with a simple biometric procedure to generate a sound associated with the identified person, virtualized at his/her estimated 3-D location. Our approach uses a variation of the K-nearest neighbors algorithm over histogram of oriented gradient descriptors dimensionally reduced by principal component analysis. The results show that our approach, on average, outperforms traditional face recognition methods while requiring much less computational resources (memory, processing power, and battery life) when compared with existing techniques in the literature, deeming it suitable for the wearable hardware constraints. We also show the performance of the system in the dark, using depth-only information acquired with Kinect's infrared camera. The validation uses a new dataset available for download, with 600 videos of 30 people, containing variation of illumination, background, and movement patterns. Experiments with existing datasets in the literature are also considered. Finally, we conducted user experience evaluations on both blindfolded and visually impaired users, showing encouraging results. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/50468-6 - Vision for the blind: translating 3D visual concepts into 3D auditory clues
• Grantee: Siome Klein Goldenstein
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Research Partnership for Technological Innovation - PITE
• FAPESP's process: 15/19222-9 - DejaVu: social media forensics for interpreting criminal events
• Grantee: Anderson de Rezende Rocha
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• FAPESP's process: 13/21349-1 - Vision for the blind: translating 3D visual concepts into 3D auditory clues
• Grantee: Felipe Leonel Grijalva Arévalo
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• FAPESP's process: 14/14630-9 - Machine learning for signal processing applied to spatial audio
• Grantee: Felipe Leonel Grijalva Arévalo
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate