Concept of the Walking Cognitive Assistance:Experimental Validation

摘要

This paper introduces a concept of a Cognitive Assistance for man Interactions with Space (CAIS), a new class of assistances for visually impaired, blinds, seniors, ... As far as travel is concerned, the assistances of this class aim to support elementary subtasks underlying the walking by providing a simplified representation of subject's nearest space (external representation of brain cognitive map) on a tactile interface. In order to validate the pertinence of the proposed space representation and its coding, a set of original experiments has been defined and implemented. Collected results, involving voluntary healthy blindfolded subjects, confirm the tactile display of certain cognitive map can help subjects to move in secure and independent way in static environments.