Orientation and Mobility training (O&M) is a specific program that teaches people with vision loss to orient themselves and travel safely within certain contexts. State-of-the-art research reveals that people with vision loss expect high-quality O&M training, especially at early ages, but the conventional O&M training methods involve tedious programs and require a high participation of professional trainers. However, there is an insufficient number of excellent trainers. In this work, we first interpret and discuss the relevant research in recent years. Then, we discuss the questionnaires and interviews we conducted with visually impaired people. On the basis of field investigation and related research, we propose the design of a training solution for children to operate and maintain direction based on audio augmented reality. We discuss how, within the perceptible scene created by EasyAR’s map-aware framework, we created an AR audio source tracing training that simulates a social scene to strengthen the audiometric identification of the subjects, and then to verify the efficiency and feasibility of this scheme, we implemented the application prototype with the required hardware and software and conducted the subsequential experiments with blindfolded children. We confirm the high usability of the designed approach by analyzing the results of the pilot study. Compared with other orientation training studies, the method we propose makes the whole training process flexible and entertaining. At the same time, this training process does not involve excessive economic costs or require professional skills training, allowing users to undergo training at home or on the sports ground rather than having to go to rehabilitation sites or specified schools. Furthermore, according to the feedback from the experiments, the approach is promising in regard to gamification.

This study addresses the challenges faced by individuals with upper limb disadvantages in operating power wheelchair joysticks by utilizing the extended Function–Behavior–Structure (FBS) model to identify design requirements for an alternative wheelchair control system. A gaze-controlled wheelchair system is proposed based on design requirements from the extended FBS model and prioritized using the MosCow method. This innovative system relies on the user’s natural gaze and comprises three levels: perception, decision making, and execution. The perception layer senses and acquires information from the environment, including user eye movements and driving context. The decision-making layer processes this information to determine the user’s intended direction, while the execution layer controls the wheelchair’s movement accordingly. The system’s effectiveness was validated through indoor field testing, with an average driving drift of less than 20 cm for participates. Additionally, the user experience scale revealed overall positive user experiences and perceptions of the system’s usability, ease of use, and satisfaction.

External cognitive burden has long been considered an important factor causing pedestrian navigation safety problems, as pedestrians in navigation inevitably acquire external information through their senses. Therefore, the influences of different types of sensory modalities and cognitive loads on walking navigation are worthy of in-depth investigation as the foundation for improving pedestrians’ safety in navigation. This study investigated users’ performance in visual, auditory, and tactile navigation under different cognitive loads by experimental simulation. Thirty-six participants were recruited for the experiment. A computer program simulating walking navigation was used, and three different cognitive task groups were set up. Participants’ reaction times and performances were recorded during the experiment, and a post-test questionnaire was administered for evaluation purposes. According to the tests, the following points are summarized. First, visual navigation performed the best in load-free conditions, which was significantly faster than auditory navigation and tactile navigation, but the difference between the latter two was not significant. There was a significant interaction between navigation types and cognitive load types. Specifically, in the condition without load, reaction time in auditory navigation was significantly slower than those in visual navigation and tactile navigation. In the condition with auditory load, reaction time in visual navigation was significantly faster than those in auditory navigation and tactile navigation. In the condition with visual load, there were no significant differences among the three navigations.