Tags Lead the Way for Blind in EU-Funded Pilot

A final major cost factor was the development of the database that maps the path and stores other location-based information. The database cost about €20,000 ($29,650) to develop for the first kilometer, with each additional kilometer costing roughly €2,000 ($2,965).

The software developers were faced with a number of hurdles, Sironi says. The application needed to be small enough to run on a PDA's operating system and quickly generate a direction command, since the user is in motion and needs to react fast to the surrounding environment. The software also needed to be able to ascertain the user's location and direction by reading just two tags, so the smaller the database, the faster the software could identify each tag ID. The team decided to store the database for each RFID-enabled path onto an SD card that users insert into the PDA, based on which particular RFID-enabled path they traverse.

An antenna in the cane's tip reads the pathway's embedded transponders.

This model should make scaling the system easy, if additional paths are built in Italy or elsewhere in Europe. Users will be able to download the databases they need to their PDAs using a Web interface, and the databases can be thus updated to reflect construction work or changes in services, such as bus schedules.

Once the guided-path trial is over—most likely in 2008, Sironi says—the JRC plans to contact the business communities in and around the pilot sites, to see if the technology could also be adapted for commercial applications. These could include using the tags as part of an electronic tour-guide application in PDAs for tourists—a service that a wireless carrier could offer. Sironi says some companies have shown an early interest in such an application, but that they have not yet been convinced about its profitability.

Unless the RFID paths find double usage as both guides for the blind and tools for commercial applications, Sironi notes, they won't likely be expanded or receive the support needed for expansion. The European Commission financed the system's development, but once the trials are complete, the JRC's involvement in the project will end. "If we don't get industrial support or support from the local authorities," he states, "this will be a dream in a drawer."

Project partners, which include the city of Laveno Mombello and an Italian association for the blind—Unione Italiana Ciechi (UIC), in the city of Udine—worked together for about a year before the first path was demonstrated in Laveno Mombello, in October. That city plans to expand the path to lead the blind to important services and stores, such as pharmacies. Deimos Engineering Srl, an IT services company, contributed to the Prealpi Giulie project.