A Wearable Face Recognition System for Individuals with Visual Impairments

This paper describes the iCare Interaction Assistant, an assistive device for helping the individuals who are visually impaired during social interactions. The research presented here addresses the problems encountered in implementing real-time face recognition algorithms on a wearable device. Face recognition is the initial step towards building a comprehensive social interaction assistant that will identify and interpret facial expressions, emotions and gestures. Experiments conducted for selecting a face recognition algorithm that works despite changes in facial pose and illumination angle are reported. Performance details of the face recognition algorithms tested on the device are presented along with the overall performance of the system. The specifics of the hardware components used in the wearable device are mentioned and the block diagram of the wearable system is explained in detail.