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AUTOUR

Links: [ Autour Community Forum | Instructions | Privacy policy]

This project was funded by the Secrétariat du Conseil du trésor of Québec
through its "Appui au passage à la société de l'information" with extensions and
improvements supported by a Google Faculty Research Award, the E. Ben and Mary
Hochhausen Award from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB), and
the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)'s Community Investment
Program.

You can download Autour from the App Store.

Made-in-Canada app enhances the world for blind, visually impaired users


OVERVIEW

Autour (French for "Around", pronounced "oh tour") is an eyes-free mobile system
designed to give blind users a better sense of their surroundings. Although
other systems (e.g., Humanware's Trekker and standard GPS tools) emphasize
navigation from one specific location to another, typically accomplished by
explicit turn-by-turn instructions, our goal is to use ambient audio to reveal
the kind of information that visual cues such as neon signs provide to sighted
users. Once users notice a point of interest, additional details are available
on demand.

When you start Autour for the first time, you'll be guided through an
interactive tutorial that demonstrates a few of the app's modes of operation.
These include Radar, which announces places as the radar sweeps past them in a
circle around the user, and Beam, which acts like a flashlight, announcing
places in the direction the user is facing. Other modes, and the settings menu,
are described in detail in the instructions. Autour can be used hand-held, or
largely hands-free, by leaving the phone in a pouch around the user's neck, as
desired. To ensure correct behaiour, it's important to specify the "carry mode"
in the app's setting menu so that Autour knows which way the phone is being
held.

The Autour user experience is tightly tied to spatialized audio, preferably
using bone-conducting or open air headphones so as not to interfere with the
natural sounds of the environment. Names of places appear to come from locations
surrounding the user, thereby giving a sense of directionality and distance.
This allows for parsimony of representation and less intrusive sound cues.
Imagine the difference between a mechanical voice stating, "Restaurant, 50
meters, 60 degrees to your left" vs. a very short "Restaurant" spatialized in
the correct direction.

Autour app helps visually impaired individuals learn what's around them

The best way to understand what Autour does is to experience it first hand. We
invite you to download the app and give it a try!


TECHNICAL DETAILS

Autour currently runs on iPhone 4s or later; the Android version is presently
being prepared. The app uses the smartphone's built-in compass, accelerometer,
gyroscope and GPS hardware to determine the user's location and orientation.
Nearby places are retrieved automatically via the Autour server. The appropriate
sound scene is then rendered using the libpd library to run PureData (Pd)
patches.

The Autour server acts as an intermediary for real-time requests to Google
Places™ and Foursquare™ to locate companies, public buildings, monuments, etc.
The Autour app can then render these places in different ways, e.g., by relative
direction ("front right") or by cardinal direction ("northeast"). Category names
(e.g., "bar," "fast food", etc.), are spatialized to sound like they are coming
from the actual location of the POI, giving a direct cue as to its direction and
distance.



The Autour server contains data for 490 transportation agencies from various
countries along with 42 Canadian agencies. These cover a significant portion of
the US and Europe. The quality of this information can vary significantly
depending on the naming convention for the lines and directions. As a result, we
cannot guarantee that each bus stop will be described sensibly, or as concisely
as possible.

Our server also contains OpenStreetMap data, as used to find the nearest point
on the closest street, to name intersections, and obtain the contours of parks
and certain large buildings such as hospitals. OpenStreetMap data is copyrighted
by its owners, who provide it under a free license (ODbL).


VIDEO DEMONSTRATION

(The following video demonstrates a much older version of Autour, formerly named
In-Situ Audio Services, or "ISAS" for short. We hope to prepare an updated video
in the fall.)




USER TESTING

We have worked with both French and English organizations for the blind in
Montreal, including the Institut Nazareth & Louis Braille (INLB) and the
Montreal Association for the Blind (MAB) to test Autour with a number of blind
participants. These user tests have taken the form of informal walkabouts while
soliciting feedback, more formal tests with specific tasks to complete using
Autour while on the streets of Montreal, and also longer-term deployments where
blind individuals were loaned iPhone devices to use in their daily routines.
Feedback has been generally positive for the system as a whole, but has also
pointed out numerous usability and other issues that have been factored into the
design. A paper (link below) summarizing the results across several of these
tests was presented at the 2013 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI).


AWARDS

Autour received the Best Paper Award at Mobiquitous 2011 in Copenhagen, Denmark
for the paper, What's around me? Spatialized audio augmented reality for blind
users with a smartphone.


Autour won the 2012 CIRA Impact Award in the Application Category. We were
interviewed after the awards ceremony at the Mesh 2012 conference in Toronto
(video here).


As part of the Impact Award program, CIRA also ran a "People's Choice Award"
competition, which Autour won by receiving the most votes from mesh12 attendees,
placing first out of the four Impact Award winners.



PUBLICATIONS & PRESENTATIONS

 1.  Autour J. R. Cooperstock. Presentation to the CNIB TechnoVision+
     Conference, Montreal, May 5, 2017.
 2.  The Walking Straight Mobile Application: Helping the Visually Impaired
     Avoid Veering Panëels, S.; Varenne, D.; Blum, J.; and Cooperstock, J. R. In
     International Conference on Auditory Displays, Lodz, Poland, July 2013.
 3.  Rendering the world to blind people via spatialized audio. J. Blum and D.
     El-Shimy and M. Bouchard and J. R. Cooperstock. Graphics, Animation and New
     Media (GRAND) Conference, Toronto, Canada, May, 2013. (Research Note)
     [Presentation Slides]
 4.  Listen to it yourself! Evaluating Usability of "What's Around Me?" for the
     Blind. S. Paneels and A. Olmos and J. R. Blum and J. R. Cooperstock. 2013.
     ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Paris, France,
     April.
 5.  Spatialized Audio Environmental Awareness for Blind Users with a
     Smartphone. Blum, Jeffrey R. and Bouchard, Mathieu and Cooperstock, Jeremy
     R. 2012, Mobile Networks and Applications, p. 1-15, Springer US, December.
 6.  Assisting the blind and treating amblyopia: Two more things you can do with
     your smartphone. Invited talk. Co-presented by J. R. Cooperstock and J. R.
     Blum. Le 15e Symposium scientifique sur l'incapacité visuelle et la
     réadaptation. University of Montreal, February, 2013.
 7.  Smartphone sensor reliability for augmented reality applications. Blum,
     J.R., Greencorn, D., and Cooperstock, J.R. 2012, 9th International
     Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and
     Services (Mobiquitous 2012), Beijing, China, December. Accept rate 31%.
 8.  Mobile is not just fun and games: improving people's lives with smartphones
     Presentation, Mobiz, Montréal Digital Festival, Montréal, Canada, November
     15, 2012.
 9.  Two ways Smartphones can change the lives of blind and visually impaired
     people Invited talk, Premier Atelier sur les Technologies Assistés, Centre
     de recherche informatique de Montréal (CRIM), 2012, Montréal, Canada, June
 10. Sound, Noise, Silence: What's around me? Spatialized audio augmented
     reality for blind users with a smartphone. Invited talk, ConnexCité,
     Montréal, Quebec, March 2012.
 11. Eyes-Free Environmental Awareness for Navigation. El-Shimy, D.; Grond, F.;
     Olmos, A.; and Cooperstock, J. R. 2012. Springer Journal on Multimodal User
     Interfaces, Special Issue on Interactive Sonification.
 12. What's around me? Spatialized audio augmented reality for blind users with
     a smartphone. Blum, J.R., Bouchard, M., and Cooperstock, J.R., Mobiquitous
     2011, Copenhagen, Denmark, December. Main track accept rate 28%. (BEST
     PAPER AWARD)
 13. Hearing Neon Signs: Spatialized Audio Augmented Reality for Blind Users.
     Invited talk, Interacting with Sound Workshop, Mobile HCI 2011, Stockholm,
     Sweden, September.


ONGOING WORK



 * Tagging mode: Users may record new content of their own, based on objects in
   their immediate vicinity, for example, "this is a great restaurant" or
   "there's a bad pothole in the sidewalk here". STATUS: 90% implemented;
   untested with users.
 * Exploring mode: An extension to Stop & Listen mode, users may query the
   system to find information about areas further away from their current
   position. STATUS: unimplemented.
 * Walking straight In addition to core environmental awareness functionality,
   we have also experimented with an additional mode designed to assist blind
   users walk in a straight line. By using the iPhone's gyroscope, we detect
   deviation from a straight path, and play sounds through headphones to guide
   the user back on course. Our user testing indicates that blind users of this
   mode do walk straighter than without, and that this is generally adequate to
   keep the user within a pedestrian walkway over a distance of 15m. Further
   details are described in our paper.




AUTOUR IN THE NEWS



 * February 8, 2018: Accessible Media Inc., Ça me regarde: L'application Autour
   (in French)
 * January 17, 2017: Télé-Québec, Electrons Libre (in French)
 * November 18, 2016: ACB Radio, Mainstream Your browser does not support the
   audio element.
 * September 26, 2016: Accessible Media Inc., Autour App (in French)
 * August 8, 2016: CBC Radio, Tech Column Your browser does not support the
   audio element.
 * August 6, 2016: CJAD Radio, Tech Talk Your browser does not support the audio
   element.
 * August 4, 2016: Mobile Syrup, McGill University researchers develop
   navigation app for Canadians living with vision loss
 * August 4, 2016: CBC, New tech for blind people narrates surroundings, leaves
   ears open
 * August 3, 2016: Betakit, McGill University researchers develop navigation app
   for Canadians living with vision loss
 * August 2, 2016: Accessible Media Inc., Live from Studio 5 Your browser does
   not support the audio element.
 * July 31, 2016: La Presse, Voir la ville... avec ses oreilles (video here)
 * July 29, 2016: CTV News, Made-in-Canada app enhances the world for blind,
   visually impaired users