@inproceedings{99ef48b0bf584208a642f8bad32ae452,
title = "Climb-o-Vision: A Computer Vision Driven Sensory Substitution Device for Rock Climbing",
abstract = "The benefits of taking part in adventurous activities are many; particularly, for people with visual impairments. Sports such as rock climbing can improve feelings of skillfulness, autonomy, and confidence for people with low or no vision as they strive to overcome environmental and personal challenges. In this late-breaking work we present Climb-o-Vision, a novel sensory substitution software that utilizes YOLOv5 computer vision object-detection architecture, to aid navigation for rock climbers with visual impairments. Climb-o-Vision uses commercially available and cost-effective hardware to detect, track, and convert climbing hold spatial locations on to the surface of the tongue, via an electrotactile tongue interface. Preliminary testing of the device highlights the possibility of using sensory substitution as a sporting aid for people with visual impairments. Furthermore, it demonstrates the potential for adapting and improving current sensory substitution systems by employing computer vision techniques to filter useful task-specific information to users with visual impairments.",
keywords = "Accessible sport, Computer vision, Rock climbing, Sensory substitution",
author = "Mike Richardson and Karin Petrini and Michael Proulx",
note = "Funding Information: We would like to thank Alex Shaw and The Climbing Academy for their continuing help in the development process of Climb-o-Vision, and for their commitment to improving climbing accessibility for people with visual impairments. We would also like to acknowledge the team at Sapien LLC, as their development of an afordable open access tongue interface, provides the ideal non-visual display for developing assistive technology. MJP{\textquoteright}s and KP{\textquoteright}s research is partly funded by the UKRI Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications (CAMERA 2.0; EP/T022523/1). MR{\textquoteright}s research is funded by a SWDTP ESRC +3 PhD studentship. ",
year = "2022",
month = apr,
day = "30",
doi = "10.1145/3491101.3519680",
language = "English",
volume = "April 2022",
series = "Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings",
publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
pages = "1--7",
booktitle = "CHI 2022 - Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
address = "USA United States",
}