Pro-Athlete: A guide system for visually impaired athletes in Olympic track race
Abstract
Assistive technologies can improve quality of life of people with special needs, providing autonomy in their daily activities. An opportunity for improvement appears in the athletics race on the track for the visually impaired, where currently the disabled athlete does not have autonomy and runs tied by rope to a guide and may have several problems of disqualification and reduced performance due to the necessary synchronization between athlete and guide. In this context, in this article we developed a hardware and software prototype equipped with wireless communication and a language code that uses vibrating stimuli to generate commands that guide the visually impaired athlete in the Olympic track race. The prototype was tested in simulated athletic races, showing good results, with commands and stimuli being well understood and interpreted by visually impaired athletes.
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