Voice maps - system supporting navigation of the blind

Improving comfort of life of blind people is a problem of great importance. Neither a white cane nor a guide dog, although both very useful, can be considered as a navigation tool, as they provide only a slight increase of independence in everyday movement around the city. On the market there are some navigation tools inspired by car navigation systems, but they have many flaws, ranging from positioning inaccuracies to high prices. A novel solution is presented in the article - a prototype application for casual smartphones. It utilizes electrocompass, built-in GPS receiver and optional DGPS receiver, which ensures acceptable accuracy. Main spatial data source is the popular OpenStreetMap system. Extra batch of spatial data can be added by users or community. Software part of the system guides users to desired target, using speech synthesis.