Related papers: mmWalk: Towards Multi-modal Multi-view Walking Ass…
Approximately 200 million individuals around the world suffer from varying degrees of visual impairment, making it crucial to leverage AI technology to offer walking assistance for these people. With the recent progress of vision-language…
For people affected by blindness and low vision (BLV), safe and independent navigation remains a major challenge, impacting over 2.2 billion individuals worldwide. Although multimodal large language models (MLLMs) offer new opportunities…
Visual impairment affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, severely limiting their ability to navigate urban environments safely and independently. While wearable assistive devices offer a promising platform for real-time hazard…
People with blindness and low vision (pBLV) face significant challenges, struggling to navigate environments and locate objects due to limited visual cues. Spatial reasoning is crucial for these individuals, as it enables them to understand…
This paper explores the effectiveness of Multimodal Large Language models (MLLMs) as assistive technologies for visually impaired individuals. We conduct a user survey to identify adoption patterns and key challenges users face with such…
People who are blind or have low vision (BLV) may hesitate to travel independently in unfamiliar environments due to uncertainty about the physical landscape. While most tools focus on in-situ navigation, those exploring pre-travel…
Large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) excel at understanding and generating video descriptions but their high memory, computation, and deployment demands hinder practical use particularly for blind and low-vision (BLV) users who depend on…
This paper introduces a dataset for improving real-time object recognition systems to aid blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals in navigation tasks. The dataset comprises 21 videos of BLV individuals navigating outdoor spaces, and a…
Shopping is a routine activity for sighted individuals, yet for people who are blind or have low vision (pBLV), locating and retrieving products in physical environments remains a challenge. This paper presents a multimodal wearable…
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have advanced rapidly in multimodal perception and language understanding, yet it remains unclear whether they can reliably ground language into spatially coherent, plausibly executable actions in 3D digital…
Approximately 283 million people worldwide live with visual impairments, motivating increasing research into leveraging Visual Language Models (VLMs) to develop effective walking assistance systems for blind and low vision individuals.…
Outdoor virtual reality (VR) places users in dynamic physical environments where they must remain aware of real-world obstacles, including static structures and moving bystanders, while immersed in a virtual scene. This dual demand…
Tactile Walking Surface Indicators (TWSIs) are safety-critical landmarks that blind and low-vision (BLV) pedestrians use to locate crossings and hazard zones. From our observation sessions with BLV guide dog handlers, trainers, and an O&M…
Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) are rapidly evolving, demonstrating impressive capabilities as multimodal assistants that interact with both humans and their environments. However, this increased sophistication introduces…
Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have been integrated into visual interpretation applications to support Blind and Low Vision (BLV) users because of their accuracy and ability to provide rich, human-like interpretations. However,…
Millions of blind and visually-impaired (BVI) people navigate urban environments every day, using smartphones for high-level path-planning and white canes or guide dogs for local information. However, many BVI people still struggle to…
Navigating unfamiliar environments remains one of the most persistent and critical challenges for people who are blind or have limited vision (BLV). Existing assistive tools often rely on online services or APIs, making them costly,…
This paper presents a curated list of 90 objects essential for the navigation of blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals, encompassing road, sidewalk, and indoor environments. We develop the initial list by analyzing 21 publicly available…
Multimodal/vision language models (VLMs) are increasingly being deployed in healthcare settings worldwide, necessitating robust benchmarks to ensure their safety, efficacy, and fairness. Multiple-choice question and answer (QA) datasets…
The rapid progress of Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) has unlocked the potential for enhanced 3D scene understanding and spatial reasoning. A recent line of work explores learning spatial reasoning directly from multi-view images,…