This paper reports on the progress of a wearable assistive technology (AT) device designed to enhance the independent, safe, and efficient mobility of blind and visually impaired pedestrians in outdoor environments. Such device exploits the smartphone’s positioning and computing capabilities to locate and guide users along urban settings. The necessary navigation instructions to reach a destination are encoded as vibrating patterns which are conveyed to the user via a foot-placed tactile interface. To determine the performance of the proposed AT device, two user experiments were conducted. The first one requested a group of 20 voluntary normally sighted subjects to recognize the feedback provided by the tactile-foot interface. The results showed recognition rates over 93%. The second experiment involved two blind voluntary subjects which were assisted to find target destinations along public urban pathways. Results show that the subjects successfully accomplished the task and suggest that blind and visually impaired pedestrians might find the AT device and its concept approach useful, friendly, fast to master, and easy to use.

Chronic immobility brings health complications on a wide spectrum of pathologies. Patients on these conditions daily needs assistance, especially bedridden, and with neuromuscular disorders, which may contain rehabilitation activities to, hence, improve the partial or full recovery of their mobility. Sessions that promote aerobic exercises still being the most recommended therapies. The paper proposes an embedded electronic board (EEB) as an open development system oriented to help in fastening the automation of prototypes and medical robotics applications. EEB contains a microcontroller with peripherals that permits sensor data acquisition, manipulate actuators commonly used on medical devices, and being interfaced with computers that may contain customized graphical user interface (GUI). Three test sets have been conducted to validate the reliability of the inverse kinematics and convenience on the automation improvement, to obtain current demand by channel and check electrical integrity. An experiment to see the temperature variation on human face, thanks to an infrared sensing, compared with gradually changing the position of the body has been carried out. Results show an accuracy on the long run of activity with 99.0% and 99.7% on 400mm and ≤120mm stroke actuators without recalibration components; the face-based infrared sensing, in conjunction with movements, has demonstrated to be an excellent monitoring for detecting the eye vascularization in the effort to display eventual cardiac abnormalities. This is the first time for this kind of approach. Results have increased the automation capabilities of the bed, offering new features that enhance its fields of application together with significant economic savings.