Copyright © 2018 S. Domb Menachem, Sanjay Bhatia. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7 (3.29) (2018) 125-129 International Journal of Engineering & Technology Website: www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJET Research paper Topography analysis using wearable devices and its integration in navigation systems S. Domb Menachem 1 *, Sanjay Bhatia 2 1 Professor in Computer Science Ashkelon Academy, Ben, Zvi, Askelon, Israel 2 Dr of Management Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management, constituent of Symbiosis *Corresponding author E-mail: menachem.domb@gmail.com Abstract Automatic navigation in an unknown environment raises various challenges as many cues about orientation are difficult to perceive without the use of vision. Though assisted aids such as GPS devices help in route finding, still it fails to fulfill safety requirements. This paper proposes a framework that provides accurate guiding and information on the route traversal and the topography of the road ahead. The framework is composed of technologies such as Lumigrids, Drone, GPS, Mobile applications, Cloud storage which are used to map the road surface and generate proper navigation guidance to the end user. This is done in three stages; [1]. Off-line mapping of the road surface and storing this information in the cloud. 2. Wearable technology used for obtaining in real-time surface information and comparing it to the data on the cloud facilitating accurate and safer navigation 3. Updating the cloud information with information collected by the pedes- trian Keywords: Navigation; Topography; Computer Vision; Wearable Technology; Mobile 1. Introduction There are many technological navigation aids like city maps and GPS navigators. But they all don’t focus on pedestrian paths. Sur- veys show travelers require detailed information about the terrain and its challenges – size, curves, hurdles, fences, changes in eleva- tion etc. [1]. This paper proposes a three-phase safe navigation sys- tem that provides surface information of the pedestrian paths and use this information while suggesting in real time routes to the vis- ually impaired/ 2. Literature review Most applications use location-sensing technology such as GPS combined with a map to locate and guide pedestrians. MOBIC dia- logue system introduces multi-tiered directions that provide pro- gressively more detailed information about a scene [9]. Recent work has found that visually impaired individuals using navigation devices travel to new areas faster [4] and with less errors and halts [5] than using Physical maps or direct experience. Sendero [6] uses smart phone’s location sensing power. Trekker Breeze [7] supports orientation us- ing a commercial GPS receiver. Other works suggests computer vi- sion based systems to recognize and locate traffic crossings, lights, and signals [14]. Recent work has combined crowd sourcing with computer vision techniques to provide additional information about traffic intersections [2] and sidewalks [15], or arbitrary images [16]. Few open source [17], [18] software systems provide similar navi- gation instructions on points of interest like restaurants and build- ings to the user using speech or Braille output. Studies say that pe- destrians are positive on using technological assisted aids to guide them for navigation [19]. Advantages of using automated techno- logical navigational aids for the visually impaired are mentioned in [11]. 3. Detailed design The proposed navigation system consists of the following three phases: 1) Terrain mapping phase 2) Pedestrian guidance phase 3) Re-mapping of the terrain based on comparative walk-thru and Terrain database In the terrain mapping phase, an unmanned aerial vehicle is made to fly over the pedestrian path. This vehicle records the GPS coor- dinates of the mapped region and accurately identifies the actual terrain of the underlying pedestrian path. This data is versioned and stored in a cloud. This referential database is centrally shared for the visually impaired. The terrain mapping phase is essential to initially map all the pe- destrian paths and populate the cloud with data. The Pedestrian guidance phase is the phase where the stored terrain related information on cloud is combined with the regular GIS/GPS based route finding [10] and in real-time is used to guide a pedes- trian in navigation. A shirt mounted device assists the visually im- paired in achieving this. During the walk-thru the mounted device with the visually impaired obtains the real-time terrain information of the path ahead and compares it to the existing information on the cloud to alert on the new challenges / hazards that may have cropped up. In case during the walk-thru by the visually impaired if the terrain poses new challenges, this information needs to be updated in the central database and require remapping as appropriate. Re-mapping can also be triggered by on-need basis.