Real-Time Text Tracking for Text-to-Speech Translation Camera for the Blind

Some mobile devices have been developed for helping the visually-impaired people to obtain useful information from text on documents, goods, and signboards. However, it is still difficult for the blind to find or even notice the text in the environment and to capture the images suitable for character recognition and speech synthesis. We developed a prototype of reading assistant device with a scene text locator that shows the text location by sound signals. To improve the device further, this paper proposes a real-time text tracking method that enables character recognition on-the-fly and also helps the users to obtain the text information easily and efficiently with less searching efforts. The presented method is based on our former one, and provides a new feature that it is tolerant of temporary occlusion or out-of-view of text regions.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Cyberscience Center, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

   Hideaki Goto

2. School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

   Takuma Hoda

Editors and Affiliations

1. Institute “Integriert Studieren”, Johannes Kepler University, Altenbergerstr. 69,, 4040, Linz, Austria

   Klaus Miesenberger

2. Ryerson University, 350 Victoria Street, M5B 2K3, Toronto, ON, Canada

   Deborah Fels

3. THIM/EA 4004 CHArt, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, 2 rue de la liberté, 93526, Saint-Denis Cedex, France

   Dominique Archambault

4. Teiresias Centre, Masaryk University, Botanická 68A, 602 00, Brno, Czech Republic

   Petr Peňáz

5. Institute “Integriert Studieren”, Vienna University of Technology, Favoritenstraße 11/029, Vienna, 1050, Austria

   Wolfgang Zagler

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