Beyond GPS

The Marine Symposium on Wayfinding, held on July 14, 2017 at the UCSC campus, brought together researchers and practitioners involved in technologies supporting independent travel for people who are blind. Accessible GPS apps already enable coarse localization and wayfinding in the outdoors; however, GPS has low spatial accuracy, and doesn't work indoors. New technologies are called for to address situations requiring fine-grained localization, as well as indoor wayfinding. This symposium highlighted recent advances in a number of promising directions, including iBeacons for indoor navigation and accessible public transit, visual-based localization, and remote sighted assistance.