ArticleDisability and rehabilitation. Assistive technology2025
Haptics-based, higher-order sensory substitution designed for object negotiation in blindness and low vision: Virtual Whiskers.
Article in Disability and rehabilitation. Assistive technology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Residual gaze behaviour during navigation in blindness and low vision.Disability and rehabilitation. Assistive technology · 2026Review
- Evaluating OCR performance for assistive technology: effects of walking speed, camera placement, and camera type.Disability and rehabilitation. Assistive technology · 2026Article
- Re-imagining sensory substitution through gestural control: Point-To-Tell 2.Disability and rehabilitation. Assistive technology · 2026Article
- Article
- Aroma: Mixed-Initiative AI Assistance for Non-Visual Cooking by Grounding Multimodal Information Between Reality and Videos.Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposePeople with blindness and low vision (pBLV) face challenges in navigating. Mobility aids are crucial for enhancing independence and safety. This paper presents an electronic travel aid that leverages a haptic-based, higher-order sensory substitution approach called Virtual Whiskers, designed to help pBLV navigate obstacles effectively, efficiently, and safely. MATERIALS AND
methodsVirtual Whiskers is equipped with a plurality of modular vibration units that operate independently to deliver haptic feedback to users. Virtual Whiskers features two navigation modes: open path mode and depth mode, each addressing obstacle negotiation from different perspectives. The open path mode detects and delineates a traversable area within an analyzed field of view and then guides the user in the most traversable direction with adaptive vibratory feedback. Depth mode assists users in negotiating obstacles by highlighting spatial areas with prominent obstacles; haptic feedback is generated by re-mapping proximity to vibration intensity. We recruited 10 participants with blindness or low vision for user testing of Virtual Whiskers.
resultsBoth approaches reduce hesitation time (idle periods) and decrease the number of cane contacts with objects and walls.
conclusionsVirtual Whiskers is a promising obstacle negotiation strategy that demonstrates great potential to assist with pBLV navigation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.