Assistive Technologies based on Image Processing for People with Visual Impairments

Automatic face detection / recognition as a tool to help social interaction of the blind

This project is supported by the University of Trieste - Finanziamento di Ateneo per progetti di ricerca scientifica - FRA 2014, and by a private donation in memory of Angelo Soranzo (1939-2012).

We study techniques that may help people with visual impairments, especially aiming at improving the quality and ease of their social relations. Tools and operators will be devised in the field of image and video acquisition, processing, and analysis.

The main goal of the FRA project is to build a robust and reliable face detection and recognition system that can be operated by a blind person. The user-in-the-loop approach may be exploited, to improve the performances of the system in the image acquisition phase. An elementary processing chain will be devised first, and the necessary sub-operators will be realized using tools that are already available in the scientific literature. Then, the study will be focused on specific components to improve on the state of the art.
Meetings with users' groups are planned for the whole duration of the project.

We are activating a cooperation with the vEyes project.
In general, we are strongly interested in participating in research, development and deployment activities that aim at goals similar to ours.

Contact: prof. Sergio Carrato (carrato _at_ units.it)