A paper by He Zhang, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science, and Lingqiu Jin, a computer science Ph.D. student, received the LORD Best Paper Award at the Visual-Inertial Navigation workshop of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) held in Macau, China.

Zhang and Jin’s adviser is Cang Ye, Ph.D., professor of computer science in the VCU College of Engineering.

Their paper proposes a design for a new robotic navigation system to help people with visual impairments travel safely through indoor and outdoor spaces. The design uses an RGB-D camera, which adds depth information to a conventional image. It also has an inertial measurement unit, which measures and reports the body's specific force and angular velocity. Their paper is titled “A Depth-Enhanced Visual Inertial Odometry for a Robotic Navigation Aid for Blind People.”

“The next phase of our work will focus on testing the performance of the system through experiments with people who have visual impairments,” Zhang said. “Thanks to Dr. Ye’s guidance and mentorship, our lab is progressing on the roadmap from research to industry applications.”